City of Bones
by LovezFanFic
Summary: Santana Lopez, a seemingly ordinary teenage girl, finds out that she isn't all that ordinary when she discovers she is the descendant of a line of Shadowhunters. Pairing - Quinntana (Based Off The Book Series "The Mortal Instruments.")
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I Own Absolutely Nothing. **

* * *

"You've got to be kidding me," the bouncer said, folding his arms across his massive chest. He stared down at the boy in the red zip-up jacket and shook his shaved head. "You can't bring that thing in here."

The fifty or so teenagers in line outside the Pandemonium Club leaned forward to eavesdrop. It was a long wait to get into the all-ages club, especially on a Sunday, and not much generally happened in line. The bouncers were fierce and would come down instantly on anyone who looked like they were going to start trouble. Sixteen-year-old Santana Lopez, standing in line with her best friend, Artie, leaned forward along with everyone else, hoping for some excitement.

"Aw, come on." The kid hoisted the thing up over his head. It looked like a wooden beam, pointed at one end. "It's part of my costume."

The bouncer raised an eyebrow. "Which is what?"

The boy grinned. He was normal-enough-looking, Santana thought, for Pandemonium. He had electric blue dyed hair that stuck up around his head like the tendrils of a startled octopus, but no elaborate facial tattoos or big metal bars through his ears or lips. "I'm a vampire hunter." He pushed down on the wooden thing. It bent as easily as a blade of grass bending sideways. "It's fake. Foam rubber. See?"

The boy's wide eyes were way too bright a green, Santana noticed: the color of antifreeze, spring grass. Colored contact lenses, probably. The bouncer shrugged, abruptly bored. "Whatever. Go on in."

The boy slid past him, quick as an eel. Santana liked the lilt to his shoulders, the way he tossed his hair as he went. There was a word for him that her mother would have used—insouciant.

"You thought he was cute," said Artie, sounding resigned. "Didn't you?"

Santana dug her elbow into his ribs, but didn't answer.

* * *

Inside, the club was full of dry-ice smoke. Colored lights played over the dance floor, turning it into a multicolored fairyland of blues and acid greens, hot pinks and golds.

The boy in the red jacket stroked the long razor-sharp blade in his hands, an idle smile playing over his lips. It had been so easy—a little bit of a glamour on the blade, to make it look harmless. Another glamour on his eyes, and the moment the bouncer had looked straight at him, he was in. Of course, he could probably have gotten by without all that trouble, but it was part of the fun—fooling the mundies, doing it all out in the open right in front of them, getting off on the blank looks on their sheep-like faces.

Not that the humans didn't have their uses. The boy's green eyes scanned the dance floor, where slender limbs clad in scraps of silk and black leather appeared and disappeared inside the revolving columns of smoke as the mundies danced. Girls tossed their long hair, boys swung their leather-clad hips, and bare skin glittered with sweat. Vitality just poured off them, waves of energy that filled him with a drunken dizziness. His lip curled. They didn't know how lucky they were. They didn't know what it was like to eke out life in a dead world, where the sun hung limp in the sky like a burned cinder. Their lives burned as brightly as candle flames—and were as easy to snuff out.

His hand tightened on the blade he carried, and he had begun to step out onto the dance floor when a girl broke away from the mass of dancers and began walking toward him. He stared at her. She was beautiful, for a human—long hair nearly the precise color of black ink, charcoaled eyes. Floor-length white gown, the kind women used to wear when this world was younger. Lace sleeves belled out around her slim arms. Around her neck was a thick silver chain, on which hung a dark red pendant the size of a baby's fist. He only had to narrow his eyes to know that it was real—real and precious. His mouth started to water as she neared him. Vital energy pulsed from her like blood from an open wound. She smiled, passing him, beckoning with her eyes. He turned to follow her, tasting the phantom sizzle of her death on his lips.

It was always easy. He could already feel the power of her evaporating life coursing through his veins like fire. Humans were so stupid. They had something so precious, and they barely safeguarded it at all. They threw away their lives for money, for packets of powder, for a stranger's charming smile. The girl was a tanned ghost, retreating through the colored smoke. She reached the wall and turned, bunching her skirt up in her hands, lifting it as she grinned at him. Under the skirt, she was wearing thigh-high boots.

He sauntered up to her, his skin prickling with her nearness. Up close she wasn't so perfect: He could see the mascara smudged under her eyes, the sweat sticking her hair to her neck. He could smell her mortality, the sweet rot of corruption. Got you, he thought.

A cool smile curled her lips. She moved to the side, and he could see that she was leaning against a closed door, no admittance—storage was scrawled across it in red paint. She reached behind her for the knob, turned it, slid inside. He caught a glimpse of stacked boxes, tangled wiring. A storage room. He glanced behind him—no one was looking. So much the better if she wanted privacy.

He slipped into the room after her, unaware that he was being followed.

* * *

"So," Artie said, "pretty good music, eh?"

Santana didn't reply. They were dancing, or what passed for it— a lot of swaying back and forth with occasional lunges toward the floor as if one of them had dropped a contact lens—in a space between a group of teenage boys in metallic corsets, and a young Asian couple who were making out passionately, their colored hair extensions tangled together like vines. A boy with a lip piercing and a teddy bear backpack was handing out free tablets of herbal ecstasy, his parachute pants flapping in the breeze from the wind machine. Santana wasn't paying much attention to their immediate surroundings—her eyes were on the blue-haired boy who'd talked his way into the club. He was prowling through the crowd as if he were looking for something. There was something about the way he moved that reminded her of something…

"I, for one," Artie went on, "am enjoying myself immensely."

This seemed unlikely. Artie, as always, stuck out at the club like a sore thumb, in jeans and an old T-shirt that said made in Brooklyn across the front. His freshly scrubbed hair was dark brown instead of green or pink, and his glasses perched crookedly on the end of his nose. He looked less as if he were contemplating the powers of darkness and more as if he were on his way to chess club.

"Mmm-hmm." Santana knew perfectly well that he came to Pandemonium with her only because she liked it, that he thought it was boring. She wasn't even sure why it was that she liked it— the clothes, the music made it like a dream, someone else's life, not her boring real life at all. But she was always too shy to talk to anyone but Artie.

The blue-haired boy was making his way off the dance floor. He looked a little lost, as if he hadn't found who he was looking for. Santana wondered what would happen if she went up and introduced herself, or offered to show him around. Maybe he'd just stare at her. Or maybe he was shy too. Maybe he'd be grateful and pleased, and try not to show it, the way boys did— but she'd know. Maybe—

The blue-haired boy straightened up suddenly, snapping to attention, like a hunting dog on point. Santana followed the line of his gaze, and saw the girl in the white dress.

Oh, well, Santana thought, trying not to feel like a deflated party balloon. I guess that's that. The girl was gorgeous, the kind of girl Santana would have liked to draw—short and ribbon-slim, with a long spill of black hair. Even at this distance Santana could see the red pendant around her throat. It pulsed under the lights of the dance floor like a separate, disembodied heart.

"I feel," Artie went on, "that this evening DJ Bat is doing a singularly exceptional job. Don't you agree?"

Santana rolled her eyes and didn't answer; Artie hated trance music. Her attention was on the girl in the white dress. Through the darkness, smoke, and artificial fog, her pale dress shone out like a beacon. No wonder the blue-haired boy was following her as if he were under a spell, too distracted to notice anything else around him—even the two dark shapes hard on his heels, weaving after him through the crowd.

Santana slowed her dancing and stared. She could just make out that the shapes were tall and wearing black clothes. She couldn't have said how she knew that they were following the other boy, but she did. She could see it in the way they paced him, their careful watchfulness, and the slinking grace of their movements. A small flower of apprehension began to open inside her chest.

"Meanwhile," Artie added, "I wanted to tell you that lately I've been cross-dressing. Also, I'm sleeping with your mom. I thought you should know."

The girl had reached the wall, and was opening a door marked no admittance. She beckoned the blue-haired boy after her, and they slipped through the door. It wasn't anything Santana hadn't seen before, a couple sneaking off to the dark corners of the club to make out—but that made it even weirder that they were being followed.

She raised herself up on her tiptoes, trying to see over the crowd. The two figures had stopped at the door and seemed to be conferring with each other. One of them was blonde and obviously a girl, the other was a dark-haired male. The blonde one reached into her jacket and drew out something long and sharp that flashed under the strobing lights. A knife. "Artie!" Santana shouted, and seized his arm.

"What?" Artie looked alarmed. "I'm not really sleeping with your mom, you know. I was just trying to get your attention. Not that your mom isn't a very attractive woman, for her age."

"Do you see those people?" She pointed wildly, almost hitting a curvy black girl who was dancing nearby. The girl shot her an evil look. "Sorry—sorry!" Santana turned back to Artie. "Do you see those two guys over there? By that door?"

Artie squinted, then shrugged. "I don't see anything."

"There are two of them. They were following the guy with the blue hair—"

"The one you thought was cute?"

"Yes, but that's not the point. The blonde one pulled a knife."

"Are you sure?" Artie stared harder, shaking his head. "I still don't see anyone."

"I'm sure."

Suddenly all business, Artie squared his shoulders. "I'll get one of the security guards. You stay here." He strode away, pushing through the crowd.

Santana turned just in time to see the blonde girl slip through the no admittance door, her friend right on her heels. She looked around; Artie was still trying to shove his way across the dance floor, but he wasn't making much progress. Even if she yelled now, no one would hear her, and by the time Artie got back, something terrible might already have happened. Biting hard on her lower lip, Santana started to wriggle through the crowd.

* * *

"What's your name?"

She turned and smiled. What faint light there was in the storage room spilled down through high barred windows smeared with dirt. Piles of electrical cables, along with broken bits of mirrored disco balls and discarded paint cans littered the floor.

"Rachel."

"That's a nice name." He walked toward her, stepping carefully among the wires in case any of them were live. In the faint light she looked half-transparent, bleached of color, wrapped in white like an angel. It would be a pleasure to make her fall…"I haven't seen you here before."

"You're asking me if I come here often?" She giggled, covering her mouth with her hand. There was some sort of bracelet around her wrist, just under the cuff of her dress—then, as he neared her, he saw that it wasn't a bracelet at all but a pattern inked into her skin, a matrix of swirling lines.

He froze. "You—"

He didn't finish. She moved with lightning swiftness, striking out at him with her open hand, a blow to his chest that would have sent him down gasping if he'd been a human being. He staggered back, and now there was something in her hand, a coiling whip that glinted gold as she brought it down, curling it around his ankles, jerking him off his feet. He hit the ground, writhing, the hated metal biting deep into his skin. She laughed, standing over him, and dizzily he thought that he should have known. No human girl would wear a dress like the one Rachel wore. She'd worn it to cover her skin—all of her skin.

Rachel yanked hard on the whip, securing it. Her smile glittered like poisonous water. "He's all yours, guys."

A low laugh sounded behind him, and now there were hands on him, hauling him upright, throwing him against one of the concrete pillars. He could feel the damp stone under his back. His hands were pulled behind him, his wrists bound with wire. As he struggled, someone walked around the side of the pillar into his view: a girl, as young as Rachel and just as pretty. Her tawny eyes glittered like chips of amber. "So," the girl said. "Are there any more with you?"

The blue-haired boy could feel blood welling up under the too-tight metal, making his wrists slippery. "Any other what?"

"Come on now." The tawny-eyed girl held up her hands, and her dark sleeves slipped down, showing the runes inked all over her wrists, the backs of her hands, and her palms. "You know what I am."

Far back inside his skull, the shackled boy's second set of teeth began to grind.

"Shadowhunter," he hissed.

Santana pushed the door to the storage room open, and stepped inside. For a moment she thought it was deserted. The only windows were high up and barred; faint street noises came through them, the sound of honking cars and squealing brakes. The room smelled like old paint, and a heavy layer of dust covered the floor, marked by smeared shoe prints.

There's no one in here, she realized, looking around in bewilderment. It was cold in the room, despite the August heat outside. Her back was icy with sweat. She took a step forward, tangling her feet in electrical wires. She bent down to free her sneaker from the cables—and heard voices. A girl's laugh, a boy answering sharply. When she straightened up, she saw them.

It was as if they had sprung into existence between one blink of her eyes and the next. There was the girl in her long white dress, her black hair hanging down her back like damp seaweed. The girl and the boy were with her—the tall guy with black hair like hers, and the other girl, the fair one, whose hair gleamed like brass in the dim light coming through the windows high above. The fair girl was standing with her hands in her pockets, facing the punk kid, who was tied to a pillar, with what looked like piano wire, his hands stretched behind him, his legs bound at the ankles. His face was pulled tight with pain and fear.

Heart hammering in her chest, Santana ducked behind the nearest concrete pillar and peered around it. She watched as the fair-skinned girl paced back and forth, her arms now crossed over her chest. "So," she said. "You still haven't told me if there are any other of your kind with you."

Your kind? Santana wondered what she was talking about. Maybe she'd stumbled into some kind of gang war.

"I don't know what you're talking about." The blue-haired boy's tone was pained but surly.

"She means other demons," said the dark-haired boy, speaking for the first time. "You do know what a demon is, don't you?"

The boy tied to the pillar turned his face away, his mouth working.

"Demons," drawled the blonde girl, tracing the word on the air with her finger. "Religiously defined as hell's denizens, the servants of Satan, but understood here, for the purposes of the Clave, to be any malevolent spirit whose origin is outside our own home dimension—"

"That's enough, Quinn," said the raven-haired girl.

"Rachel's right," agreed the taller boy. "Nobody here needs a lesson in semantics—or demonology."

They're crazy, Santana thought. Actually crazy.

Quinn raised her head and smiled. There was something fierce about the gesture, something that reminded Santana of documentaries she'd watched about lions on the Discovery Channel, the way the big cats would raise their heads and sniff the air for prey. "Rachel and Noah think I talk too much," she said, confidingly. "Do you think I talk too much?"

The blue-haired boy didn't reply. His mouth was still working. "I could give you information," he said. "I know where Santos is."

Quinn glanced back at Noah, who shrugged. "Santos is in the ground," Quinn said. "The thing's just toying with us."

Rachel tossed her hair. "Kill it, Quinn," she said. "It's not going to tell us anything."

Quinn raised her hand, and Santana saw dim light spark off the knife she was holding. It was oddly translucent, the blade clear as crystal, sharp as a shard of glass, the hilt set with red stones.

The bound boy gasped. "Santos is back!" he protested, dragging at the bonds that held his hands behind his back. "All the Infernal Worlds know it—I know it—I can tell you where he is—"

Rage flared suddenly in Quinn's icy eyes. "By the Angel, every time we capture one of you bastards, you claim you know where Santos is. Well, we know where he is too. He's in hell. And you—" Quinn turned the knife in her grasp, the edge sparking like a line of fire. "You can join him there."

Santana could take no more. She stepped out from behind the pillar. "Stop!" she cried. "You can't do this."

Quinn whirled, so startled that the knife flew from her hand and clattered against the concrete floor. Rachel and Noah turned along with her, wearing identical expressions of astonishment. The blue-haired boy hung in his bonds, stunned and gaping.

It was Noah who spoke first. "What's this?" he demanded, looking from Santana to his companions, as if they might know what she was doing there.

"It's a girl," Quinn said, recovering her composure. "Surely you've seen girls before, Noah. Your sister Rachel is one and so am I." She took a step closer to Santana, squinting as if she couldn't quite believe what she was seeing. "A mundie girl," she said, half to herself. "And she can see us."

"Of course I can see you," Santana said. "I'm not blind, you know."

"Oh, but you are," said Quinn, bending to pick up her knife. "You just don't know it." She straightened up. "You'd better get out of here, if you know what's good for you."

"I'm not going anywhere," Santana said. "If I do, you'll kill him." She pointed at the boy with the blue hair.

"That's true," admitted Quinn, twirling the knife between her fingers. "What do you care if I kill him or not?"

"Be-because—," Santana spluttered. "You can't just go around killing people."

"You're right," said Quinn. "You can't go around killing people." She pointed at the boy with blue hair, whose eyes were slitted. Santana wondered if he'd fainted. "That's not a person, little girl. It may look like a person and talk like a person and maybe even bleed like a person. But it's a monster."

"Quinn," said Rachel warningly. "That's enough."

"You're crazy," Santana said, backing away from her. "I've called the police, you know. They'll be here any second."

"She's lying," said Noah, but there was doubt on his face. "Quinn, do you—"

He never got to finish his sentence. At that moment the blue-haired boy, with a high, yowling cry, tore free of the restraints binding him to the pillar, and flung himself on Quinn.

They fell to the ground and rolled together, the blue-haired boy tearing at Quinn with hands that glittered as if tipped with metal. Santana backed up, wanting to run, but her feet caught on a loop of wiring and she went down, knocking the breath out of her chest. She could hear Rachel shrieking. Rolling over, Santana saw the blue-haired boy sitting on Quinn's chest. Blood gleamed at the tips of his razor-like claws.

Rachel and Noah were running toward them, Rachel brandishing a whip in her hand. The blue-haired boy slashed at Quinn with claws extended. Quinn threw an arm up to protect herself, and the claws raked it, splattering blood. The blue-haired boy lunged again—and Rachel's whip came down across his back. He shrieked and fell to the side.

Swift as a flick of Rachel's whip, Quinn rolled over. There was a blade gleaming in her hand. She sank the knife into the blue-haired boy's chest. Blackish liquid exploded around the hilt. The boy arched off the floor, gurgling and twisting. With a grimace, Quinn stood up. Her black shirt was blacker now in some places, wet with blood. She looked down at the twitching form at her feet, reached down, and yanked out the knife. The hilt was slick with black fluid.

The blue-haired boy's eyes flickered open. His eyes, fixed on Quinn, seemed to burn. Between his teeth, he hissed, "So be it. The Forsaken will take you all."

Quinn seemed to snarl. The boy's eyes rolled back. His body began to jerk and twitch as he crumpled, folding in on himself, growing smaller and smaller until he vanished entirely.

Santana scrambled to her feet, kicking free of the electrical wiring. She began to back away. None of them was paying attention to her. Noah had reached Quinn and was holding her arm, pulling at the sleeve, probably trying to get a good look at the wound. Santana turned to run—and found her way blocked by Rachel, whip in hand. The gold length of it was stained with dark fluid. She flicked it toward Santana, and the end wrapped itself around her wrist and jerked tight. Santana gasped with pain and surprise.

"Stupid little mundie," Rachel said between her teeth. "You could have gotten Quinn killed."

"She's crazy," Santana said, trying to pull her wrist back. The whip bit deeper into her skin. "You're all crazy. What do you think you are, vigilante killers? The police—"

"The police aren't usually interested unless you can produce a body," said Quinn. Cradling her arm, she picked her way across the cable-strewn floor toward Santana. Noah followed behind her, his face screwed into a scowl.

Santana glanced at the spot where the boy had disappeared from, and said nothing. There wasn't even a smear of blood there—nothing to show that the boy had ever existed.

"They return to their home dimensions when they die," said Quinn. "In case you were wondering."

"Quinn," Noah hissed. "Be careful."

Quinn drew her arm away. A ghoulish freckling of blood marked her face. Quinn still reminded her of a lion, with her wide-spaced, light-colored eyes, and that tawny gold hair. "She can see us, Noah," she said. "She already knows too much."

"So what do you want me to do with her?" Rachel demanded.

"Let her go," Quinn said quietly. Rachel shot her a surprised, almost angry look, but didn't argue. The whip slithered away, freeing Santana's arm. She rubbed her sore wrist and wondered how the hell she was going to get out of there.

"Maybe we should bring her back with us," Noah said. "I bet Hodge would like to talk to her."

"No way are we bringing her to the Institute," said Rachel. "She's a mundie."

"Or is she?" said Quinn softly. Her quiet tone was worse than Rachel's snapping one or Noah's angry one. "Have you had dealings with demons, little girl? Walked with warlocks, talked with the Night Children? Have you—"

"My name is not 'little girl,'" Santana interrupted. "And I have no idea what you're talking about." _Don't you?_ said a voice in the back of her head. You saw that boy vanish into thin air. Quinn isn't crazy—you just wish she was. "I don't believe in—in demons, or whatever you—"

"Santana?" It was Artie's voice. She whirled around. He was standing by the storage room door. One of the burly bouncers who'd been stamping hands at the front door was next to him. "Are you okay?" He peered at her through the gloom. "Why are you in here by yourself? What happened to the guys—you know, the ones with the knives?"

Santana stared at him, then looked behind her, where Quinn, Rachel, and Noah stood, Quinn still in her bloody shirt with the knife in her hand. She grinned at her and dropped a half-apologetic, half-mocking shrug. Clearly she wasn't surprised that neither Artie nor the bouncer could see them.

Somehow neither was Santana. Slowly she turned back to Artie, knowing how she must look to him, standing alone in a damp storage room, her feet tangled in bright plastic wiring cables. "I thought they went in here," she said lamely. "But I guess they didn't. I'm sorry." She glanced from Artie, whose expression was changing from worried to embarrassed, to the bouncer, who just looked annoyed. "It was a mistake."

Behind her, Rachel giggled.

* * *

"I don't believe it," Artie said stubbornly as Santana, standing at the curb, tried desperately to hail a cab. Street cleaners had come down Orchard while they were inside the club, and the street was glossed black with oily water.

"I know," she agreed. "You'd think there'd be some cabs. Where is everyone going at midnight on a Sunday?" She turned back to him, shrugging. "You think we'd have better luck on Houston?"

"Not the cabs," Artie said. "You—I don't believe you. I don't believe those guys with the knives just disappeared."

Santana sighed. "Maybe there weren't any guys with knives, Artie. Maybe I just imagined the whole thing."

"No way." Artie raised his hand over his head, but the oncoming taxis whizzed by him, spraying dirty water. "I saw your face when I came into that storage room. You looked seriously freaked out, like you'd seen a ghost."

Santana thought of Quinn with her lion-cat eyes. She glanced down at her wrist, braceleted by a thin red line where Rachel's whip had curled. No, not a ghost, she thought. Something even weirder than that.

"It was just a mistake," she said wearily. She wondered why she wasn't telling him the truth. Except, of course, that he'd think she was crazy. And there was something about what had happened—something about the black blood bubbling up around Quinn's knife, something about her voice when she'd said _Have you talked with the Night Children?_ Something she wanted to keep to herself.

"Well, it was a hell of an embarrassing mistake," Artie said. He glanced back at the club, where a thin line still snaked out the door and halfway down the block. "I doubt they'll ever let us back into Pandemonium."

"What do you care? You hate Pandemonium." Santana raised her hand again as a yellow shape sped toward them through the fog. This time, though, the taxi screeched to a halt at their corner, the driver laying into his horn as if he needed to get their attention.

"Finally we get lucky." Artie yanked the taxi door open and slid onto the plastic-covered backseat. Santana followed, inhaling the familiar New York cab smell of old cigarette smoke, leather, and hair spray. "We're going to Brooklyn," Artie said to the cabbie, and then he turned to Santana. "Look, you know you can tell me anything, right?"

Santana hesitated a moment, then nodded. "Sure, Artie," she said. "I know I can."

She slammed the cab door shut behind her, and the taxi took off into the night.


	2. Chapter 2

******Disclaimer: I Own Absolutely Nothing.**

* * *

The dark princess sat astride her black steed, her sable cape flowing behind her. A golden circlet bound her blonde locks, her beautiful face was cold with the rage of battle, and…

"And her arm looked like an eggplant," Santana muttered to herself in exasperation. The drawing just wasn't working. With a sigh she tore yet another sheet from her sketchpad, crumpled it up, and tossed it against the green wall of her bedroom. Already the floor was littered with discarded balls of paper, a sure sign that her creative juices weren't flowing the way she'd hoped. She wished for the thousandth time that she could be a bit more like her mother. Everything Juliana Lopez drew, painted, or sketched was beautiful, and seemingly effortless.

Santana pulled her headphones out—cutting off Katy Perry in midsong—and rubbed her aching temples. It was only then that she became aware that the loud, piercing sound of a ringing telephone was echoing through the apartment. Tossing the sketchpad onto the bed, she jumped to her feet and ran into the living room, where the retro-red phone sat on a table near the front door.

"Is this Santana Lopez?" The voice on the other end of the phone sounded familiar, though not immediately identifiable.

Santana twirled the phone cord nervously around her finger. "Yeees?"

"Hi, I'm one of the knife-carrying hooligans you met last night in Pandemonium? I'm afraid I made a bad impression and was hoping you'd give me a chance to make it up to—"

"ARTIE!" Santana held the phone away from her ear as he cracked up laughing. "That is so not funny!"

"Sure it is. You just don't see the humor."

"Jerk." Santana sighed, leaning up against the wall. "You wouldn't be laughing if you'd been here when I got home last night."

"Why not?"

"My mom. She wasn't happy that we were late. She freaked out. It was messy."

"What? It's not our fault there was traffic!" Artie protested. He was the youngest of three children and had a finely honed sense of familial injustice.

"Yeah, well, she doesn't see it that way. I disappointed her, I let her down, and I made her worry, blah blah blah. I am the bane of her existence," Santana said, mimicking her mother's precise phrasing with only a slight twinge of guilt.

"So, are you grounded?" Artie asked, a little too loudly. Santana could hear a low rumble of voices behind him; people talking over each other.

"I don't know yet," she said. "My mom went out this morning with Collin, and they're not back yet. Where are you, anyway? Caleb's?"

"Yeah. We just finished up practice." A cymbal clashed behind Artie. Santana winced. "Caleb's doing a poetry reading over at Java Jones tonight," Artie went on, naming a coffee shop around the corner from Santana's that sometimes had live music at night. "The whole band's going to go to show their support. Want to come?"

"Yeah, all right." Santana paused, tugging on the phone cord anxiously. "Wait, no."

"Shut up, guys, will you?" Artie yelled, the faintness of his voice making Santana suspect that he was holding the phone away from his mouth. He was back a second later, sounding troubled. "Was that a yes or a no?"

"I don't know." Santana bit her lip. "My mom's still mad at me about last night. I'm not sure I want to piss her off by asking for any favors. If I'm going to get in trouble, I don't want it to be on account of Caleb's lousy poetry."

"Come on, it's not so bad," Artie said. Caleb was his next-door neighbor, and the two had known each other most of their lives. They weren't close the way Artie and Santana were, but they had formed a rock band together at the start of sophomore year, along with Caleb's friends Matt and Kurt. They practiced together faithfully in Caleb's parents' garage every week. "Besides, it's not a favor," Artie added, "it's a poetry slam around the block from your house. It's not like I'm inviting you to some orgy in Hoboken. Your mom can come along if she wants."

"ORGY IN HOBOKEN!" Santana heard someone, probably Caleb, yell. Another cymbal crashed. She imagined her mother listening to Caleb read his poetry, and she shuddered inwardly.

"I don't know. If all of you show up here, I think she'll freak."

"Then I'll come alone. I'll pick you up and we can walk over there together, meet the rest of them there. Your mom won't mind. She loves me."

Santana had to laugh. "Sign of her questionable taste, if you ask me."

"Nobody did." Artie clicked off, amid shouts from his bandmates.

Santana hung up the phone and glanced around the living room. Evidence of her mother's artistic tendencies was everywhere, from the handmade velvet throw pillows piled on the dark red sofa to the walls hung with Juliana's paintings, carefully framed—landscapes, mostly: the winding streets of downtown Manhattan lit with golden light; scenes of Prospect Park in winter, the gray ponds edged with lacelike films of white ice.

On the mantel over the fireplace was a framed photo of Santana's father. A thoughtful-looking tanned man in military dress, his eyes bore the telltale traces of laugh lines at the corners. He'd been a decorated soldier serving overseas. Juliana had some of his medals in a small box by her bed. Not that the medals had done anyone any good when Antonio Ramirez had crashed his car into a tree just outside Albany and died before his daughter was even born.

Juliana had gone back to using her maiden name after he died. She never talked about Santana's father, but she kept the box engraved with his initials, A. R, next to her bed. Along with the medals were one or two photos, a wedding ring, and a single lock of brown hair. Sometimes Juliana took the box out and opened it and held the lock of hair very gently in her hands before putting it back and carefully locking the box up again.

The sound of the key turning in the front door roused Santana out of her reverie. Hastily she threw herself down on the couch and tried to look as if she were immersed in one of the paperbacks her mother had left stacked on the end table. Juliana recognized reading as a sacred pastime and usually wouldn't interrupt Santana in the middle of a book, even to yell at her.

The door opened with a thump. It was Collin, his arms full of what looked like big square pieces of pasteboard. When he set them down, Santana saw that they were cardboard boxes, folded flat. He straightened up and turned to her with a smile.

"Hey, Un—hey, Collin," she said. He'd asked her to stop calling him Uncle Collin about a year ago, claiming that it made him feel old, and anyway reminded him of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Besides, he'd reminded her gently, he wasn't really her uncle, just a close friend of her mother's who'd known her all her life. "Where's Mom?"

"Parking the truck," he said, straightening his lanky frame with a groan. He was dressed in his usual uniform: old jeans, a flannel shirt, and a bent pair of gold-rimmed spectacles that sat askew on the bridge of his nose. "Remind me again why this building has no service elevator?"

"Because it's old, and has character," Santana said immediately. Collin grinned. "What are the boxes for?" she asked.

His grin vanished. "Your mother wanted to pack up some things," he said, avoiding her gaze.

"What things?" Santana asked.

He gave an airy wave. "Extra stuff lying around the house. Getting in the way. You know she never throws anything out. So what are you up to? Studying?" He plucked the book out of her hand and read out loud: "The world still teams with those motley beings, whom a more sober philosophy has discarded. Fairies and goblins, ghosts and demons, still hover about—" He lowered the book and looked at her over his glasses. "Is this for school?"

"The Golden Bough? No. School's not for a few weeks." Santana took the book back from him. "It's my mom's."

"I had a feeling."

She dropped it back on the table. "Collin?"

"Uh-huh?" The book already forgotten, he was rummaging in the tool kit next to the hearth. "Ah, here it is." He pulled out an orange plastic tape gun and gazed at it with deep satisfaction.

"What would you do if you saw something nobody else could see?"

The tape gun fell out of Collin's hand, and hit the tiled hearth. He knelt to pick it up, not looking at her. "You mean if I were the only witness to a crime, that sort of thing?"

"No. I mean, if there were other people around, but you were the only one who could see something. As if it were invisible to everyone but you."

He hesitated, still kneeling, the dented tape gun gripped in his hand.

"I know it sounds crazy," Santana ventured nervously, "but…"

He turned around. His eyes, very blue behind the glasses, rested on her with a look of firm affection. "Santana, you're an artist, like your mother. That means you see the world in ways that other people don't. It's your gift, to see the beauty and the horror in ordinary things. It doesn't make you crazy—just different. There's nothing wrong with being different."

Santana pulled her legs up, and rested her chin on her knees. In her mind's eye she saw the storage room, Rachel's gold whip, the blue-haired boy convulsing in his death spasms, and Quinn's tawny eyes. Beauty and horror. She said, "If my dad had lived, do you think he'd have been an artist too?"

Collin looked taken aback. Before he could answer her, the door swung open and Santana's mother stalked into the room, her boot heels clacking on the polished wooden floor. She handed Collin a set of jingling car keys and turned to look at her daughter.

Juliana Lopez was a slim, compact woman, her hair a few shades darker than Santana's and twice as long. At the moment it was twisted up in a dark red knot, stuck through with a graphite pen to hold it in place. She wore paint-spattered overalls over a lavender T-shirt, and brown hiking boots whose soles were caked with oil paint.

People always told Santana that she looked like her mother, but she couldn't see it herself. The only thing that was similar about them was their figures: They were both slender, with small but perky chests and narrow hips. She knew she wasn't beautiful like her mother was. To be beautiful you had to be willowy and tall. When you were as short as Santana was, just over 5'3, you were cute. Not pretty or beautiful, but cute.

Juliana even had a graceful way of walking that made people turn their heads to watch her go by. Santana, by contrast, was always tripping over her feet. The only time people turned to watch her go by was when she hurtled past them as she fell downstairs.

"Thanks for bringing the boxes up," Santana's mother said to Collin, and smiled at him. He didn't return the smile. Santana's stomach did an uneasy flip. Clearly there was something going on. "Sorry it took me so long to find a space. There must be a million people at the park today—"

"Mom?" Santana interrupted. "What are the boxes for?"

Juliana bit her lip. Collin flicked his eyes toward Santana, mutely urging Juliana forward. With a nervous twitch of her wrist, Juliana pushed a dangling lock of hair behind her ear and went to join her daughter on the couch.

Up close Santana could see how tired her mother looked. There were dark half-moons under her eyes, and her lids were pearly with sleeplessness.

"Is this about last night?" Santana asked.

"No," her mother said quickly, and then hesitated. "Maybe a little. You shouldn't have done what you did last night. You know better."

"And I already apologized. What is this about? If you're grounding me, get it over with."

"I'm not," said her mother, "grounding you." Her voice was as taut as a wire. She glanced at Collin, who shook his head.

"Just tell her, Juliana," he said.

"Could you not talk about me like I'm not here?" Santana said angrily. "And what do you mean, tell me? Tell me what?"

Juliana expelled a sigh. "We're going on vacation."

Collin's expression went blank, like a canvas wiped clean of paint.

Santana shook her head. "That's what this is about? You're going on vacation?" She sank back against the cushions. "I don't get it. Why the big production?"

"I don't think you understand. I meant we're all going on vacation. The three of us—you, me, and Collin. We're going to the farmhouse."

"Oh." Santana glanced at Collin, but he had his arms crossed over his chest and was staring out the window, his jaw pulled tight. She wondered what was upsetting him. He loved the old farmhouse in upstate New York—he'd bought and restored it himself ten years before, and he went there whenever he could. "For how long?"

"For the rest of the summer," said Juliana. "I brought the boxes in case you want to pack up any books, painting supplies—"

"For the rest of the summer?" Santana sat upright with indignation. "I can't do that, Mom. I have plans—Artie and I were going to have a back-to-school party, and I've got a bunch of meetings with my art group, and ten more classes at Tisch—"

"I'm sorry about Tisch. But the other things can be canceled. Artie will understand, and so will your art group."

Santana heard the implacability in her mother's tone and realized she was serious. "But I paid for those art classes! I saved up all year! You promised." She whirled, turning to Collin. "Tell her! Tell her it isn't fair!"

Collin didn't look away from the window, though a muscle jumped in his cheek. "She's your mother. It's her decision to make."

"I don't get it." Santana turned back to her mother. "Why?"

"I have to get away, Santana," Juliana said, the corners of her mouth trembling. "I need the peace, the quiet, to paint. And money is tight right now—"

"So sell some more of Dad's stocks," Santana said angrily. "That's what you usually do, isn't it?"

Juliana recoiled. "That's hardly fair."

"Look, go if you want to go. I don't care. I'll stay here without you. I can work; I can get a job at Starbucks or something. Artie said they're always hiring. I'm old enough to take care of myself—"

"No!" The sharpness in Juliana's voice made Santana jump. "I'll pay you back for the art classes, Santana. But you are coming with us. It isn't optional. You're too young to stay here on your own. Something could happen."

"Like what? What could happen?" Santana demanded.

There was a crash. She turned in surprise to find that Collin had knocked over one of the framed pictures leaning against the wall. Looking distinctly upset, he set it back. When he straightened, his mouth was set in a grim line. "I'm leaving."

Juliana bit her lip. "Wait." She hurried after him into the entryway, catching up just as he seized the doorknob. Twisting around on the sofa, Santana could just overhear her mother's urgent whisper."… Chang," Juliana was saying. "I've been calling him and calling him for the past three weeks. His voice mail says he's in Tanzania. What am I supposed to do?"

"Juliana." Collin shook his head. "You can't keep going to him forever."

"But Santana—"

"Isn't Antonio," Collin hissed. "You've never been the same since it happened, but Santana isn't Antonio."

What does my father have to do with this? Santana thought, bewildered.

"I can't just keep her at home, not let her go out. She won't put up with it."

"Of course she won't!" Collin sounded really angry. "She's not a pet, she's a teenager. Almost an adult."

"If we were out of the city…"

"Talk to her, Juliana." Collin's voice was firm. "I mean it." He reached for the doorknob.

The door flew open. Juliana gave a little scream.

"Jesus!" Collin exclaimed.

"Actually, it's just me," said Artie. "Although I've been told the resemblance is startling." He waved at Santana from the doorway. "You ready?"

Juliana took her hand away from her mouth. "Artie, were you eavesdropping?"

Artie blinked. "No, I just got here." He looked from Juliana's pale face to Collin's grim one. "Is something wrong? Should I go?"

"Don't bother," Collin said. "I think we're done here." He pushed past Artie, thudding down the stairs at a rapid pace. Downstairs, the front door slammed shut.

Artie hovered in the doorway, looking uncertain. "I can come back later," he said. "Really. It wouldn't be a problem."

"That might—," Juliana began, but Santana was already on her feet.

"Forget it, Artie. We're leaving," she said, grabbing her messenger bag from a hook near the door. She slung it over her shoulder, glaring at her mother. "See you later, Mom."

Juliana bit her lip. "Santana, don't you think we should talk about this?"

"We'll have plenty of time to talk while we're on 'vacation'," Santana said venomously, and had the satisfaction of seeing her mother flinch. "Don't wait up," she added, grabbing Artie's arm as she half-dragged him out the front door.

He dug his heels in, looking apologetically over his shoulder at Santana's mother, who stood small and forlorn in the entryway, her hands knitted tightly together. "Bye, Ms. Lopez!" he called. "Have a nice evening!"

"Oh, shut up, Artie," Santana snapped, and slammed the door behind them, cutting off her mother's reply.

"Jesus, woman, don't rip my arm off," Artie protested as Santana hauled him downstairs after her, her red converse slapping against the wooden stairs with every angry step. She glanced up, half-expecting to see her mother glaring down from the landing, but the apartment door stayed shut.

"Sorry," Santana muttered, letting go of his wrist. She paused at the foot of the stairs, her messenger bag banging against her hip.

Santana's brownstone, like most in Park Slope, had once been the single residence of a wealthy family. Shades of its former grandeur were still evident in the curving staircase, the chipped marble entryway floor, and the wide single-paned skylight overhead. Now the house was split into separate apartments, and Santana and her mother shared the three-floor building with a downstairs tenant, an elderly woman who ran a psychic's shop out of her apartment. She hardly ever came out of it, though customer visits were infrequent. A gold plaque fixed to the door proclaimed her to be Madame DOROTHEA, SEERESS AND PROPHETESS.

The thick sweet scent of incense spilled from the half-open door into the foyer. Santana could hear a low murmur of voices.

"Nice to see she's doing a booming business," Artie said. "It's hard to get steady prophet work these days."

"Do you have to be sarcastic about everything?" Santana snapped.

Artie blinked, clearly taken aback. "I thought you liked it when I was witty and ironic."

Santana was about to reply when the door to Madame Dorothea's swung fully open and a man stepped out. He was tall, with maple-syrup-colored skin, gold-green eyes like a cat's, and tangled black hair. He grinned at her blindingly, showing sharp white teeth.

A wave of dizziness came over her, the strong sensation that she was going to faint.

Artie glanced at her uneasily. "Are you all right? You look like you're going to pass out."

She blinked at him. "What? No, I'm fine."

He didn't seem to want to let it drop. "You look like you just saw a ghost."

She shook her head. The memory of having seen something teased her, but when she tried to concentrate, it slid away like water. "Nothing. I thought I saw Dorothea's cat, but I guess it was just a trick of the light." Artie stared at her. "I haven't eaten anything since yesterday," she added defensively. "I guess I'm a little out of it."

He slid a comforting arm around her shoulders. "Come on, I'll buy you some food."

* * *

"I just can't believe she's being like this," Santana said for the fourth time, chasing a stray bit of guacamole around her plate with the tip of a nacho. They were at a neighborhood Mexican joint, a hole in the wall called Nacho Mama. "Like grounding me every other week wasn't bad enough. Now I'm going to be exiled for the rest of the summer."

"Well, you know, your mom gets like this sometimes," Artie said. "Like when she breathes in or out." He grinned at her around his veggie burrito.

"Oh, sure, act like it's funny," she said. "You're not the one getting dragged off to the middle of nowhere for God knows how long—"

"Santana." Artie interrupted her tirade. "I'm not the one you're mad at. Besides, it isn't going to be permanent."

"How do you know that?"

"Well, because I know your mom," Artie said, after a pause. "I mean, you and I have been friends for what, ten years now? I know she gets like this sometimes. She'll think better of it."

Santana picked a hot pepper off her plate and nibbled the edge meditatively. "Do you, though?" she said. "Know her, I mean? I sometimes wonder if anyone does."

Artie blinked at her. "You lost me there."

Santana sucked in air to cool her burning mouth. "I mean, she never talks about herself. I don't know anything about her early life, or her family, or much about how she met my dad. She doesn't even have wedding photos. It's like her life started when she had me. That's what she always says when I ask her about it."

"Aw." Artie made a face at her. "That's sweet."

"No, it isn't. It's weird. It's weird that I don't know anything about my grandparents. I mean, I know my dad's parents weren't very nice to her, but could they have been that bad? What kind of people don't even want to meet their granddaughter?"

"Maybe she hates them. Maybe they were abusive or something," Artie suggested. "She does have those scars."

Santana stared at him. "She has what?"

He swallowed a mouthful of burrito. "Those little thin scars. All over her back and her arms. I have seen your mother in a bathing suit, you know."

"I never noticed any scars," Santana said decidedly. "I think you're imagining things."

He stared at her, and seemed about to say something when her cell phone, buried in her messenger bag, began an insistent blaring. Santana fished it out, gazed at the numbers blinking on the screen, and scowled. "It's my mom."

"I could tell from the look on your face. You going to talk to her?"

"Not right now," Santana said, feeling the familiar bite of guilt in her stomach as the phone stopped ringing and voice mail picked up. "I don't want to fight with her."

"You can always stay at my house," Artie said. "For as long as you want."

"Well, we'll see if she calms down first." Santana punched the voice mail button on her phone. Her mother's voice sounded tense, but she was clearly trying for lightness: "Baby, I'm sorry if I sprang the vacation plan on you. Come on home and we'll talk." Santana hung the phone up before the message ended, feeling even guiltier and still angry at the same time. "She wants to talk about it."

"Do you want to talk to her?"

"I don't know." Santana rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes. "Are you still going to the poetry reading?"

"I promised I would."

Santana stood up, pushing her chair back. "Then I'll go with you. I'll call her when it's over." The strap of her messenger bag slid down her arm. Artie pushed it back up absently, his fingers lingering at the bare skin of her shoulder.

The air outside was spongy with moisture, the humidity frizzing Santana's hair and sticking Artie's blue T-shirt to his back. "So, what's up with the band?" she asked. "Anything new? There was a lot of yelling in the background when I talked to you earlier."

Artie's face lit up. "Things are great," he said. "Matt says he knows someone who could get us a gig at the Scrap Bar. We're talking about names again too."

"Oh, yeah?" Santana hid a smile. Artie's band never actually produced any music. Mostly they sat around in Artie's living room, fighting about potential names and band logos. She sometimes wondered if any of them could actually play an instrument. "What's on the table?"

"We're choosing between Sea Vegetable Conspiracy and Rock Solid Panda."

Santana shook her head. "Those are both terrible."

"Caleb suggested Lawn Chair Crisis."

"Maybe Caleb should stick to gaming."

"But then we'd have to find a new drummer."

"Oh, is that what Caleb does? I thought he just mooched money off you and went around telling girls at school that he was in a band in order to impress them."

"Not at all," Artie said breezily. "Caleb has turned over a new leaf. He has a girlfriend. They've been going out for three months."

"Practically married," Santana said, stepping around a couple pushing a toddler in a stroller: a little girl with yellow plastic clips in her hair who was clutching a pixie doll with gold-streaked sapphire wings. Out of the corner of her eye Santana thought she saw the wings flutter. She turned her head hastily.

"Which means," Artie continued, "that I am the last member of the band not to have a girlfriend. Which, you know, is the whole point of being in a band. To get girls."

"I thought it was all about the music." A man with a cane cut across her path, heading for Berkeley Street. She glanced away, afraid that if she looked at anyone for too long they would sprout wings, extra arms, or long forked tongues like snakes. "Who cares if you have a girlfriend, anyway?"

"I care," Artie said gloomily. "Pretty soon the only people left without a girlfriend will be me and Wendell the school janitor. And he smells like Windex."

"At least you know he's still available."

Artie glared. "Not funny, Lopez."

"There's always Sheila 'The Thong' Barbarino," Santana suggested. Santana had sat behind her in math class in ninth grade. Every time Sheila had dropped her pencil—which had been often—Santana had been treated to the sight of Sheila's underwear riding up above the waistband of her super-low-rise jeans.

"That is who Caleb's been dating for the past three months," Artie said. "His advice, meanwhile, was that I ought to just decide which girl in school had the most rockin' bod and ask her out on the first day of classes."

"Caleb is a sexist pig," Santana said, suddenly not wanting to know which girl in school Artie thought had the most rockin' bod. "Maybe you should call the band The Sexist Pigs."

"It has a ring to it." Artie seemed unfazed. Santana made a face at him, her messenger bag vibrating as her phone blared. She fished it out of the zip pocket. "Is it your mom again?" he asked.

Santana nodded. She could see her mother in her mind's eye, small and alone in the doorway of their apartment. Guilt unfurled in her chest.

She glanced up at Artie, who was looking at her, his eyes dark with concern. His face was so familiar she could have traced its lines in her sleep. She thought of the lonely weeks that stretched ahead without him, and shoved the phone back into her bag. "Come on," she said. "We're going to be late for the show."

* * *

By the time they got to Java Jones, Caleb was already onstage, swaying back and forth in front of the microphone with his eyes squinted shut. He'd dyed the tips of his hair pink for the occasion. Behind him, Matt, looking stoned, was beating irregularly on a djembe.

"This is going to suck so hard," Santana predicted. She grabbed Artie's sleeve and tugged him toward the doorway. "If we make a run for it, we can still get away."

He shook his head determinedly. "I'm nothing if not a man of my word." He squared his shoulders. "I'll get the coffee if you find us a seat. What do you want?"

"Just coffee. Black—like my soul."

Artie headed off toward the coffee bar, muttering under his breath something to the effect that it was a far, far better thing he did now than he had ever done before. Santana went to find them a seat.

The coffee shop was crowded for a Monday; most of the threadbare-looking couches and armchairs were taken up with teenagers enjoying a free weeknight. The smell of coffee and clove cigarettes was overwhelming. Finally Santana found an unoccupied love seat in a darkened corner toward the back. The only other person nearby was a blonde girl in an orange tank top, absorbed in playing with her iPod. _Good_, Santana thought, _Caleb won't be able to find us back here after the show to ask how his poetry was._

The blonde girl leaned over the side of her chair and tapped Santana on the shoulder. "Excuse me." Santana looked up in surprise. "Is that your boyfriend?" the girl asked.

Santana followed the line of the girl's gaze, already prepared to say, 'No, I don't know him', when she realized the girl meant Artie. He was headed toward them, face scrunched up in concentration as he tried not to drop either of his Styrofoam cups. "Uh, no," Santana said. "He's a friend of mine."

The girl beamed. "He's cute. Does he have a girlfriend?"

Santana hesitated a second too long before replying. "No."

The girl looked suspicious. "Is he gay?"

Santana was spared responding to this by Artie's return. The blonde girl sat back hastily as be set the cups on the table and threw himself down next to Santana. "I hate it when they run out of mugs. Those things are hot." He blew on his fingers and scowled. Santana tried to hide a smile as she watched him. Normally she never thought about whether Simon was good-looking or not. He had pretty dark eyes, she supposed, and he'd filled out well over the past year or so. With the right haircut— "You're staring at me," Artie said. "Why are you staring at me? Have I got something on my face?"

_I should tell him_, she thought, though some part of her was strangely reluctant. _I'd be a bad friend if I didn't._ "Don't look now, but that blonde girl over there thinks you're cute," she whispered.

Artie's eyes flicked sideways to stare at the girl, who was industriously studying an issue of Shonen Jump. "The girl in the orange top?" Santana nodded. Artie looked dubious. "What makes you think so?"

_Tell him. Go on, tell him_. Santana opened her mouth to reply, and was interrupted by a burst of feedback. She winced and covered her ears as Caleb, onstage, wrestled with his microphone.

"Sorry about that, guys!" he yelled. "All right. I'm Caleb, and this is my homeboy Matt on the drums. My first poem is called 'Untitled.'" He screwed up his face as if in pain, and wailed into the mic. "Come, my faux juggernaut, my nefarious loins! Slather every protuberance with arid zeal!"

"Wanky." said Santana.

Artie slid down in his seat. "Please don't tell anyone I know him."

Santana giggled. "Who uses the word loins?"

"Caleb," Artie said grimly. "All his poems have loins in them."

"Turgid is my torment!" Caleb wailed. "Agony swells within!"

"You bet it does," Santana said. She slid down in the seat next to Artie. "Anyway, about that girl who thinks you're cute—"

"Never mind that for a second," Artie said. Santana blinked at him in surprise. "There's something I wanted to talk to you about."

"Furious Mole is not a good name for a band," Santana said immediately.

"Not that," Artie said. "It's about what we were talking about before. About me not having a girlfriend."

"Oh." Santana lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "Oh, I don't know. Ask Mercedes Jones out," she suggested, naming one of the few girls at St. Xavier's she actually liked. "She's nice, and she likes you."

"I don't want to ask Mercedes Jones out."

"Why not?" Santana found herself seized with a sudden, unspecific resentment. "You don't like smart girls? Still seeking a rockin' bod?"

"Neither," said Artie, who seemed agitated. "I don't want to ask her out because it wouldn't really be fair to her if I did…"

He trailed off. Santana leaned forward. From the corner of her eye she could see the blonde girl leaning forward too, plainly eavesdropping. "Why not?"

"Because I like someone else," Artie said.

"Okay." Artie looked faintly greenish, the way he had once when he'd broken his ankle playing soccer in the park and had had to limp home on it. She wondered what on earth about liking someone could possibly have him wound up to such a pitch of anxiety. "You're not gay, are you?"

Artie's greenish color deepened. "If I were, I would dress better."

"So, who is it, then?" Santana asked. She was about to add that if he were in love with Sheila Barbarino, Caleb would kick his ass, when she heard someone cough loudly behind her. It was a derisive sort of cough, the kind of noise someone might make who was trying not to laugh out loud.

She turned around.

Sitting on a faded green sofa a few feet away from her was Quinn. She was wearing the same dark clothes she'd had on the night before in the club. Her arms were bare and covered with faint white lines like old scars. Her wrists bore wide metal cuffs; she could see the bone handle of a knife protruding from the left one. Quinn was looking right at her, the side of her narrow mouth quirked in amusement. Worse than the feeling of being laughed at was Santana's absolute conviction that she hadn't been sitting there five minutes ago.

"What is it?" Artie had followed her gaze, but it was obvious from the blank expression on his face that he couldn't see Quinn.

_But I see you._ She stared at Quinn as she thought it, and Quinn raised her left hand to wave at her. A ring glittered on a slim finger. She got to her feet and began walking, unhurriedly, toward the door. Santana's lips parted in surprise. She was leaving, just like that.

She felt Artie's hand on her arm. He was saying her name, asking her if something was wrong. She barely heard him. "I'll be right back," she heard herself say, as she sprang off the couch, almost forgetting to set her coffee cup down. She raced toward the door, leaving Artie staring after her.

Santana burst through the doors, terrified that Quinn would have vanished into the alley shadows like a ghost. But she was there, slouched against the wall. She had just taken something out of her pocket and was punching buttons on it. She looked up in surprise as the door of the coffee shop fell shut.

In the rapidly falling twilight, her hair looked coppery gold. "Your friend's poetry is terrible," she said.

Santana blinked, caught momentarily off guard. "What?"

"I said his poetry was terrible. It sounds like he ate a dictionary and started vomiting up words at random."

"I don't care about Caleb's poetry." Santana was furious. "I want to know why you're following me."

"Who said I was following you?"

"Nice try. And you were eavesdropping, too. Do you want to tell me what this is about, or should I just call the police?"

"And tell them what?" Quinn said witheringly. "That invisible people are bothering you? Trust me, little girl, the police aren't going to arrest someone they can't see."

"I told you before, my name is not little girl," she said through her teeth. "It's Santana."

"I know," she said. "Pretty name. Like the musician, Carlos Santana. Do you know him?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"You don't know much, do you?" she said. There was a lazy contempt in her gold eyes. "You seem to be like any other mundane, yet you can see me. It's a conundrum."

"What's a mundane?"

"Someone of the human world. Someone like you."

"But you're human," Santana said.

"I am," she said. "But I'm not like you." There was no defensiveness in her tone. She sounded like she didn't care if Santana believed her or not.

"You think you're better. That's why you were laughing at us."

"I was laughing at you because declarations of love amuse me, especially when unrequited," she said. "And because your Artie is one of the most mundane mundanes I've ever encountered. And because Hodge thought you might be dangerous, but if you are, you certainly don't know it."

"I'm dangerous?" Santana echoed in astonishment. "I saw you kill someone last night. I saw you drive a knife up under his ribs, and—" _And I saw him slash at you with fingers like razor blades. I saw you cut and bleeding, and now you look as if nothing ever touched you._

"I may be a killer," Quinn said, "but I know what I am. Can you say the same?"

"I'm an ordinary human being, just like you said. Who's Hodge?"

"My tutor. And I wouldn't be so quick to brand myself as ordinary, if I were you." She leaned forward.

"Let me see your right hand."

"My right hand?" Santana echoed. She nodded. "If I show you my hand, will you leave me alone?"

"Certainly." Her voice was edged with amusement.

She held out her right hand grudgingly. Somehow she felt as exposed as if she were pulling up her shirt and showing the girl her naked chest. Quinn took her hand in hers and turned it over. "Nothing." She sounded almost disappointed. "You're not left-handed, are you?"

"No. Why?"

She released Santana's hand with a shrug. "Most Shadowhunter children get marked on their right hands—or left, if they're left-handed like I am—when they're still young. It's a permanent rune that lends an extra skill with weapons." She showed Santana the back of her left hand; it looked perfectly normal to her.

"I don't see anything," she said.

"Let your mind relax," Quinn suggested. "Wait for it to come to you. Like waiting for something to rise to the surface of water."

"You're crazy." But she relaxed, gazing at Quinn's hand, seeing the tiny lines across the knuckles, the long joints of the fingers—

It jumped out at her suddenly, flashing like a don't walk sign. A black design like an eye across the back of her hand. She blinked, and it vanished. "A tattoo?"

Quinn smiled smugly and lowered her hand. "I thought you could do it. And it's not a tattoo—it's a mark. They're runes, burned into our skin."

"They make you handle weapons better?" Santana found this hard to believe, though perhaps no more hard to believe than the existence of zombies.

"Different Marks do different things. Some are permanent but the majority vanish when they've been used."

"That's why your arms aren't all inked up today?" she asked. "Even when I concentrate?"

"That's exactly why." Quinn sounded pleased with herself. "I knew you had the Sight, at least." She glanced up at the sky. "It's nearly full dark. We should go."

"We? I thought you were going to leave me alone."

"I lied," Quinn said without a shred of embarrassment. "Hodge said I have to bring you to the Institute with me. He wants to talk to you."

"Why would he want to talk to me?"

"Because you know the truth now," Quinn said. "There hasn't been a mundane who knew about us for at least a hundred years."

"About us?" Santana echoed. "You mean people like you. People who believe in demons."

"People who kill them," said Quinn. "We're called Shadowhunters. At least, that's what we call ourselves. The Downworlders have less complimentary names for us."

"Downworlders?"

"The Night Children. Warlocks. The fey. The magical folk of this dimension."

Santana shook her head. "Don't stop there. I suppose there are also, what, vampires and werewolves and zombies?"

"Of course there are," Quinn informed her. "Although you mostly find zombies farther south, where the voudun priests are."

"What about mummies? Do they only hang around Egypt?"

"Don't be ridiculous. No one believes in mummies."

"They don't?"

"Of course not," Quinn said. "Look, Hodge will explain all this to you when you see him."

Santana crossed her arms over her chest. "What if I don't want to see him?"

"That's your problem. You can come either willingly or unwillingly."

Santana couldn't believe her ears. "Are you threatening to kidnap me?"

"If you want to look at it that way," Quinn said, "yes."

Santana opened her mouth to protest angrily, but was interrupted by a strident buzzing noise. Her phone was ringing again.

"Go ahead and answer that if you'd like," Quinn said generously.

The phone stopped ringing, then started up again, loud and insistent. Santana frowned—her mom must really be freaking out. She half-turned away from Quinn and began digging in her bag. By the time she unearthed the phone, it was on its third set of rings. She raised it to her ear. "Mom?"

"Oh, Santana. Oh, thank God." A sharp prickle of alarm ran up Santana's spine. Her mother sounded panicked. "Listen to me—"

"It's all right, Mom. I'm fine. I'm on my way home—"

"No!" Terror scraped Juliana's voice raw. "Don't come home! Do you understand me, Santana? Don't you dare come home. Go to Artie's. Go straight to Artie's house and stay there until I can—" A noise in the background interrupted her: the sound of something falling, shattering, something heavy striking the floor—

"Mom!" Santana shouted into the phone. "Mom, are you all right?"

A loud buzzing noise came from the phone. Santana's mother's voice cut through the static: "Just promise me you won't come home. Go to Artie's and call Collin—tell him that he's found me—" Her words were drowned out by a heavy crash like splintering wood.

"Who's found you? Mom, did you call the police? Did you—"

Her frantic question was cut off by a noise Santana would never forget—a harsh, slithering noise, followed by a thump. Santana heard her mother draw in a sharp breath before speaking, her voice eerily calm: "I love you, Santana."

The phone went dead.

"Mom!" Santana shrieked into the phone. "Mom, are you there?" Call ended, the screen said. But why would her mother have hung up like that?

"Santana," Quinn said. It was the first time she'd ever heard Quinn say her name. "What's going on?"

Santana ignored her. Feverishly she hit the button that dialed her home number. There was no answer except a double-tone busy signal.

Santana's hands had begun to shake uncontrollably. When she tried to redial, the phone slipped out of her shaking grasp and hit the pavement hard. She dropped to her knees to retrieve it, but it was dead, a long crack visible across the front. "Dammit!" Almost in tears, she threw the phone down.

"Stop that." Quinn hauled her to her feet, her hand gripping her wrist. "Has something happened?"

"Give me your phone," Santana said, grabbing the black metal oblong out of Quinn's shirt pocket. "I have to—"

"It's not a phone," Quinn said, making no move to get it back. "It's a Sensor. You won't be able to use it."

"But I need to call the police!"

"Tell me what happened first." She tried to yank her wrist back, but Quinn's grip was incredibly strong. "I can help you."

Rage flooded through Santana, a hot tide through her veins. Without even thinking about it, she struck out at Quinn's face, her nails raking her cheek. Quinn jerked back in surprise. Tearing herself free, Santana ran toward the lights of Seventh Avenue.

When she reached the street, she spun around, half-expecting to see Quinn at her heels. But the alley was empty. For a moment she stared uncertainly into the shadows. Nothing moved inside them. She spun on her heel and ran for home.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: I Own Absolutely Nothing.**

* * *

The night had gotten even hotter, and running home felt like swimming as fast as she could through boiling soup. At the corner of her block Santana got trapped at a don't walk sign. She jittered up and down impatiently on the balls of her feet while traffic whizzed by in a blur of headlights. She tried to call home again, but Quinn hadn't been lying; her phone wasn't a phone. At least, it didn't look like any phone Santana had ever seen before. The Sensor's buttons didn't have numbers on them, just more of those bizarre symbols, and there was no screen.

Jogging up the street toward her house, she saw that the second-floor windows were lit, the usual sign that her mother was home. Okay, she told herself. Everything's fine. But her stomach tightened the moment she stepped into the entryway. The overhead light had burned out, and the foyer was in darkness. The shadows seemed full of secret movement. Shivering, she started upstairs.

"And just where do you think you're going ?" said a voice.

Santana whirled. "What—"

She broke off. Her eyes were adjusting to the dimness, and she could see the shape of a large armchair, drawn up in front of Madame Dorothea's closed door. The old woman was wedged into it like an overstuffed cushion. In the dimness Santana could see only the round shape of her powdered face, the white lace fan in her hand, the dark, yawning gap of her mouth when she spoke. "Your mother," Dorothea said, "has been making a god-awful racket up there. What's she doing? Moving furniture?"

"I don't think—"

"And the stairwell light's burned out, did you notice?" Dorothea rapped her fan against the arm of the chair. "Can't your mother get her boyfriend to change it?"

"Collin isn't—"

"The skylight needs washing too. It's filthy. No wonder it's nearly pitch-black in here."

Collin is NOT the landlord, Santana wanted to say, but didn't. This was typical of her elderly neighbor. Once she got Collin to come around and change the light-bulb, she'd ask him to do a hundred other things—pick up her groceries, grout her shower. Once she'd made him chop up an old sofa with an axe so she could get it out of the apartment without taking the door off the hinges.

Santana sighed. "I'll ask."

"You'd better." Dorothea snapped her fan shut with a flick of her wrist.

Santana's sense that something was wrong only increased when she reached the apartment door. It was unlocked, hanging slightly open, spilling a wedge-shaped shaft of light onto the landing. With a feeling of increasing panic she pushed the door open.

Inside the apartment the lights were on, all the lamps, everything turned up to full brightness. The glow stabbed into her eyes.

Her mother's keys and pink handbag were on the small wrought iron shelf by the door, where she always left them. "Mom?" Santana called out. "Mom, I'm home."

There was no reply. She went into the living room. Both windows were open, yards of gauzy white curtains blowing in the breeze like restless ghosts. Only when the wind dropped and the curtains settled did Santana see that the cushions had been ripped from the sofa and scattered around the room. Some were torn lengthwise, cotton innards spilling onto the floor. The bookshelves had been tipped over, their contents scattered. The piano bench lay on its side, gaping open like a wound, Juliana's beloved music books spewing out.

Most terrifying were the paintings. Every single one had been cut from its frame and ripped into strips, which were scattered across the floor. It must have been done with a knife—canvas was almost impossible to tear with your bare hands. The empty frames looked like bones picked clean. Santana felt a scream rising up in her chest: "Mom!" she shrieked. "Where are you? Mommy!"

She hadn't called Juliana "Mommy" since she was eight.

Heart pumping, she raced into the kitchen. It was empty, the cabinet doors open, a smashed bottle of Tabasco sauce spilling peppery red liquid onto the linoleum. Her knees felt like bags of water. She knew she should race out of the apartment, get to a phone, and call the police. But all those things seemed distant—she needed to find her mother first, needed to see that she was all right. What if robbers had come, what if her mother had put up a fight—?

What kind of robbers didn't take a wallet with them, or the TV, the DVD player, or the expensive laptops?

She was at the door to her mother's bedroom now. For a moment it looked as if this room, at least, had been left untouched. Juliana's handmade flowered quilt was folded carefully on the duvet. Santana's own face smiled back at her from the top of the bedside table, five years old, gap-toothed smile framed by dark brown hair. A sob rose in Santana's chest. _Mom_, she cried inside, _what happened to you_?

Silence answered her. No, not silence—a noise sounded through the apartment, raising the short hairs along the nape of her neck. Like something being knocked over—a heavy object striking the floor with a dull thud. The thud was followed by a dragging, slithering noise—and it was coming toward the bedroom. Stomach contracting in terror, Santana scrambled to her feet and turned around slowly.

For a moment she thought the doorway was empty, and she felt a wave of relief. Then she looked down.

It was crouched against the floor, a long, scaled creature with a cluster of flat black eyes set dead center in the front of its domed skull. Something like a cross between an alligator and a centipede, it had a thick, flat snout and a barbed tail that whipped menacingly from side to side. Multiple legs bunched underneath it as it readied itself to spring.

A shriek tore itself out of Santana's throat. She staggered backward, tripped, and fell, just as the creature lunged at her. She rolled to the side and it missed her by inches, sliding along the wood floor, its claws gouging deep grooves. A low growl bubbled from its throat.

She scrambled to her feet and ran toward the hallway, but the thing was too fast for her. It sprang again, landing just above the door, where it hung like a gigantic malignant spider, staring down at her with its cluster of eyes. Its jaws opened slowly, showing a row of fanged teeth spilling greenish drool. A long black tongue flickered out between its jaws as it gurgled and hissed. To her horror Santana realized that the noises it was making were words.

"Girl," it hissed. "Flesh. Blood. To eat, oh, to eat."

It began to slither slowly down the wall. Some part of Santana had passed beyond terror into a sort of icy stillness. The thing was on its feet now, crawling toward her. Backing away, she seized a heavy framed photo off the bureau beside her—herself and her mother and Collin at Coney Island, about to go on the bumper cars—and flung it at the monster.

The photograph hit its midsection and bounced off, striking the floor with the sound of shattering glass. The creature didn't seem to notice. It came on toward her, broken glass splintering under its feet. "Bones, to crunch, to suck out the marrow, to drink the veins…"

Santana's back hit the wall. She could back up no farther. She felt a movement against her hip and nearly jumped out of her skin. Her pocket. Plunging her hand inside, she drew out the plastic thing she'd taken from Quinn. The Sensor was shuddering, like a cell phone set to vibrate. The hard material was almost painfully hot against her palm. She closed her hand around the Sensor just as the creature sprang.

The creature hurtled into her, knocking her to the ground, and her head and shoulders slammed against the floor. She twisted to the side, but it was too heavy. It was on top of her, an oppressive, slimy weight that made her want to gag. "To eat, to eat," it moaned. "But it is not allowed, to swallow, to savor."

The hot breath in her face stank of blood. She couldn't breathe. Her ribs felt like they might shatter. Her arm was pinned between her body and the monster's, the Sensor digging into her palm. She twisted, trying to work her hand free. "Santos will never know. He said nothing about a girl. Santos will not be angry." Its lipless mouth twitched as its jaws opened, slowly, a wave of stinking breath hot in her face.

Santana's hand came free. With a scream she hit out at the thing, wanting to smash it, to blind it. She had almost forgotten the Sensor. As the creature lunged for her face, jaws wide, she jammed the Sensor between its teeth and felt hot, acidic drool coat her wrist and spill in burning drops onto the bare skin of her face and throat. As if from a distance, she could hear herself screaming.

Looking almost surprised, the creature jerked back, the Sensor lodged between two teeth. It growled, a thick angry buzz, and threw its head back. Santana saw it swallow, saw the movement of its throat_. I'm next_, she thought, panicked. _I'm_—

Suddenly the thing began to twitch. Spasming uncontrollably, it rolled off Santana and onto its back, multiple legs churning the air. Black fluid poured from its mouth.

Gasping for air, Santana rolled over and started to scramble away from the thing. She'd nearly reached the door when she heard something whistle through the air next to her head. She tried to duck, but it was too late. An object slammed heavily into the back of her skull, and she collapsed forward into blackness.

* * *

Light stabbed through her eyelids, blue, white, and red. There was a high wailing noise, rising in pitch like the scream of a terrified child. Santana gagged and opened her eyes.

She was lying on cold damp grass. The night sky rippled overhead, the pewter gleam of stars washed out by city lights. Quinn knelt beside her, the silver cuffs on her wrists throwing off sparks of light as she tore the piece of cloth she was holding into strips. "Don't move."

The wailing threatened to split her ears in half. Santana turned her head to the side, disobediently, and was rewarded with a razoring stab of pain that shot down her back. She was lying on a patch of grass behind Juliana's carefully tended rosebushes. The foliage partially hid her view of the street, where a police car, its blue-and-white light bar flashing, was pulled up to the curb, siren wailing. Already a small knot of neighbors had gathered, staring as the car door opened and two blue-uniformed officers emerged.

The police. She tried to sit up, and gagged again, fingers spasming into the damp earth.

"I told you not to move," Quinn hissed. "That Ravener demon got you in the back of the neck. It was half-dead so it wasn't much of a sting, but we have to get you to the Institute. Hold still."

"That thing—the monster—it talked." Santana was shuddering uncontrollably.

"You've heard a demon talk before." Quinn's hands were gentle as she slipped the strip of knotted cloth under Santana's neck, and tied it. It was smeared with something waxy, like the gardener's salve her mother used to keep her paint- and turpentine-abused hands soft.

"The demon in Pandemonium—it looked like a person."

"It was an Eidolon demon. A shape-changer. Raveners look like they look. Not very attractive, but they're too stupid to care."

"It said it was going to eat me."

"But it didn't. You killed it." Quinn finished the knot and sat back.

To Santana's relief the pain in the back of her neck had faded. She hauled herself into a sitting position. "The police are here." Her voice came out like a frog's croak. "We should—"

"There's nothing they can do. Somebody probably heard you screaming and reported it. Ten to one those aren't real police officers. Demons have a way of hiding their tracks."

"My mom," Santana said, forcing the words through her swollen throat.

"There's Ravener poison coursing through your veins right now. You'll be dead in an hour if you don't come with me." She got to her feet and held out a hand to her. Santana took it and Quinn pulled her upright. "Come on."

The world tilted. Quinn slid a hand across Santana's back, holding her steady. The blonde smelled of dirt, blood, and metal. "Can you walk?"

"I think so." She glanced through the densely blooming bushes. She could see the police coming up the path. One of them, a slim red-headed woman, held a flashlight in one hand. As she raised it, Santana saw the hand was fleshless, a skeleton hand sharpened to bone points at the fingertips. "Her hand—"

"I told you they might be demons." Quinn glanced at the back of the house. "We have to get out of here. Can we go through the alley?"

Santana shook her head. "It's bricked up. There's no way—" Her words dissolved into a fit of coughing. She raised her hand to cover her mouth. It came away red. She whimpered.

Quinn grabbed her wrist, turned it over so the white, vulnerable flesh of her inner arm lay bare under the moonlight. Traceries of blue vein mapped the inside of her skin, carrying poisoned blood to her heart, and her brain. Santana felt her knees buckle. There was something in Quinn's hand, something sharp and silver. She tried to pull her hand back, but Quinn's grip was too strong: She felt a stinging kiss against her skin. When the blonde let go, Santana saw an inked black symbol like the ones that covered Quinn's skin, just below the fold of her wrist. This one looked like a set of overlapping circles.

"What's that supposed to do?"

"It'll hide you," she said. "Temporarily." Quinn slid the thing Santana had thought was a knife back into her belt. It was a long, luminous cylinder, as thick around as an index finger and tapering to a point. "My stele," she said.

Santana didn't ask what that was. She was busy trying not to fall over. The ground was heaving up and down under her feet. "Quinn," she said, and she crumpled into the girl. Quinn caught her as if she were used to catching fainting girls, as if she did it every day. Maybe she did. She swung Santana up into her arms, saying something in her ear that sounded like Covenant. Santana tipped her head back to look at her but saw only the stars cartwheeling across the dark sky overhead. Then the bottom dropped out of everything, and even Quinn's arms around her were not enough to keep her from falling.

* * *

"Do you think she'll ever wake up? It's been three days already."

"You have to give her time. Demon poison is strong stuff, and she's a mundane. She hasn't got runes to keep her strong like we do."

"Mundies die awfully easily, don't they?"

"Rachel, you know it's bad luck to talk about death in a sickroom."

_Three days_, Santana thought slowly. All her thoughts ran as thickly and slowly as blood or honey. _I have to wake up._

But she couldn't.

The dreams held her, one after the other, a river of images that bore her along like a leaf tossed in a current. She saw her mother lying in a hospital bed, eyes like bruises in her face. She saw Collin, standing atop a pile of bones. Quinn with white feathered wings sprouting out of her back, Rachel sitting naked with her whip curled around her like a net of gold rings, Artie with crosses burned into the palms of his hands. Angels, falling and burning. Falling out of the sky.

"I told you it was the same girl."

"I know. Little thing, isn't she? Quinn said she killed a Ravener."

"Yeah. I thought she was a pixie the first time we saw her. She's not pretty enough to be a pixie, though."

"Well, nobody looks their best with demon poison in their veins. Is Hodge going to call on the Brothers?"

"I hope not. They give me the creeps. Anyone who mutilates themselves like that—"

"We mutilate ourselves."

"I know, Noah, but when we do it, it isn't permanent. And it doesn't always hurt…"

"If you're old enough. Speaking of which, where is Quinn? She saved her, didn't she? I would have thought she'd take some interest in her recovery."

"Hodge said she hasn't been to see her since she brought her here. I guess she doesn't care."

"Sometimes I wonder if she—Look! She moved!"

"I guess she's alive after all." A sigh. "I'll tell Hodge."

Santana's eyelids felt as if they had been sewed shut. She imagined she could feel tearing skin as she peeled them slowly open and blinked for the first time in three days.

She saw clear blue sky above her, white puffy clouds and chubby angels with gilded ribbons trailing from their wrists. _Am I dead_? she wondered. Could heaven actually look like this? She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again: This time she realized that what she was staring at was an arched wooden ceiling, painted with a rococo motif of clouds and cherubs.

Painfully she hauled herself into a sitting position. Every part of her ached, especially the back of her neck. She glanced around. She was tucked into a linen-sheeted bed, one of a long row of similar beds with metal headboards. Her bed had a small nightstand beside it with a white pitcher and cup on it. Lace curtains were pulled across the windows, blocking the light, although she could hear the faint, ever-present New York sounds of traffic coming from outside.

"So, you're finally awake," said a dry voice. "Hodge will be pleased. We all thought you'd probably die in your sleep."

Santana turned. Rachel was perched on the next bed, her long jet-black hair wound into two thick braids that fell past her waist. Her white dress had been replaced by jeans and a tight blue tank top, though the red pendant still winked at her throat. Her dark spiraling tattoos were gone; her skin was as unblemished as the surface of a bowl of cream.

"Sorry to disappoint you." Santana's voice rasped like sandpaper. "Is this the Institute?"

Rachel rolled her eyes. "Is there anything Quinn didn't tell you?"

Santana coughed. "This is the Institute, right?"

"Yes. You're in the infirmary, not that you haven't figured that out already."

A sudden, stabbing pain made Santana clutch at her stomach. She gasped.

Rachel looked at her in alarm. "Are you okay?"

The pain was fading, but Santana was aware of an acid feeling in the back of her throat and a strange light-headedness. "My stomach."

"Oh, right. I almost forgot. Hodge said to give you this when you woke up." Rachel grabbed for the ceramic pitcher and poured some of the contents into the matching cup, which she handed to Santana. It was full of a cloudy liquid that steamed slightly. It smelled like herbs and something else, something rich and dark. "You haven't eaten anything in three days," Rachel pointed out. "That's probably why you feel sick."

Santana gingerly took a sip. It was delicious, rich and satisfying with a buttery aftertaste. "What is this?"

Rachel shrugged. "One of Hodge's tisanes. They always work." She slid off the bed, landing on the floor with a catlike arch of her back. "I'm Rachel Puckerman, by the way. I live here."

"I know your name. I'm Santana. Santana Lopez. Did Quinn bring me here?"

Rachel nodded. "Hodge was furious. You got ichor and blood all over the carpet in the entryway. If she'd done it while my parents were here, she'd have gotten grounded for sure." She looked at Santana more narrowly. "Quinn said you killed that Ravener demon all by yourself."

A quick image of the scorpion thing with its crabbed, evil face flashed through Santana's mind; she shuddered and clutched the cup more tightly. "I guess I did."

"But you're a mundie."

"Amazing, isn't it?" Santana said, savoring the look of thinly disguised amazement on Rachel's face. "Where is Quinn? Is she around?"

Rachel shrugged. "Somewhere," she said. "I should go tell everyone you're up. Hodge'll want to talk to you."

"Hodge is Quinn's tutor, right?"

"Hodge tutors us all." She pointed. "The bathroom's through there, and I hung some of my old clothes on the towel rack in case you want to change."

Santana went to take another sip from the cup and found that it was empty. She no longer felt hungry or light-headed either, which was a relief. She set the cup down and hugged the sheet around herself. "What happened to my clothes?"

"They were covered in blood and poison. Quinn burned them."

"Did she?" asked Santana. "Tell me, is she always really rude, or does she save that for mundanes?"

"Oh, she's rude to everyone," said Rachel airily. "It's what makes her so damn sexy. That, and she's killed more demons than anyone else her age."

Santana looked at her, perplexed. "Isn't she your sister?"

That got Rachel's attention. She laughed out loud. "Quinn? My sister? No. Whatever gave you that idea?"

"Well, she lives here with you," Santana pointed out. "Doesn't she?"

Rachel nodded. "Well, yes, but…"

"Why doesn't she live with her own parents?"

For a fleeting moment Rachel looked uncomfortable. "Because they're dead."

Santana's mouth opened in surprise. "Did they die in an accident?"

"No." Rachel fidgeted, pushing a dark lock of hair behind her left ear. "Her mother died when Quinn was born. Her father was murdered when she was ten. Quinn saw the whole thing."

"Oh," Santana said, her voice small. "Was it… demons?"

Rachel got to her feet. "Look, I'd better let everyone know you've woken up. They've been waiting for you to open your eyes for three days. Oh, and there's soap in the bathroom," she added. "You might want to clean up a little. You smell."

Santana glared at her. "Thanks a lot."

"Any time."

Rachel's clothes looked ridiculous. Santana had to roll the legs on the jeans up several times before she stopped tripping on them, and the plunging neckline of the red tank top only emphasized her lack of what Caleb would have called a "rack."

She cleaned up in the small bathroom, using a bar of hard lavender soap. Drying herself with a white hand towel, she left damp hair straggling around her face in fragrant tangles. She squinted at her reflection in the mirror. There was a purpling bruise high up on her left cheek, and her lips were dry and swollen.

_I have to call Collin_, she thought. Surely there was a phone around here somewhere. Maybe they'd let her use it after she talked to Hodge.

She found her converse placed neatly at the foot of her infirmary bed, her keys tied into the laces. Sliding her feet into them, she took a deep breath and left to find Rachel.

The corridor outside the infirmary was empty. Santana glanced down it, perplexed. It looked like the sort of hallway she sometimes found herself racing down in nightmares, shadowy and infinite. Glass lamps blown into the shapes of roses hung at intervals on the walls, and the air smelled like dust and candle wax.

In the distance she could hear a faint and delicate noise, like wind chimes shaken by a storm. She set off down the corridor slowly, trailing a hand along the wall. The Victorian-looking wallpaper was faded with age, burgundy and pale gray. Each side of the corridor was lined with closed doors.

The sound she was following grew louder. Now she could identify it as the sound of a piano being played with desultory but undeniable skill, though she couldn't identify the tune.

Turning the corner, she came to a doorway, the door propped fully open. Peering in she saw what was clearly a music room. A grand piano stood in one corner, and rows of chairs were arranged against the far wall. A covered harp occupied the center of the room.

Quinn was seated at the grand piano, her slender hands moving rapidly over the keys. She was barefoot, dressed in jeans and a gray T-shirt, her tawny hair ruffled up around her head as if she'd just woken up. Watching the quick, sure movements of her hands across the keys, Santana remembered how it had felt to be lifted up by those hands, her arms holding Santana up and the stars hurtling down around Quinn's head like a rain of silver tinsel.

She must have made some noise, because Quinn twisted around on the stool, blinking into the shadows. "Noah?" she said. "Is that you?"

"It's not Noah. It's me." She stepped farther into the room. "Santana."

Piano keys jangled as she got to her feet. "Our own Sleeping Beauty. Who finally kissed you awake?"

"Nobody. I woke up on my own."

"Was there anyone with you?"

"Rachel, but she went off to get someone—Hodge, I think. She told me to wait, but—"

"I should have warned her about your habit of never doing what you're told." Quinn squinted at her. "Are those Rachel's clothes? They look ridiculous on you."

"I could point out that you burned my clothes."

"It was purely precautionary." She slid the gleaming black piano cover closed. "Come on, I'll take you to Hodge."

The Institute was huge, a vast cavernous space that looked less like it had been designed according to a floor plan and more like it had been naturally hollowed out of rock by the passage of water and years. Through half-open doors Santana glimpsed countless identical small rooms, each with a stripped bed, a nightstand, and a large wooden wardrobe standing open. Pale arches of stone held up the high ceilings, many of the arches intricately carved with small figures. She noticed certain repeating motifs: angels and swords, suns and roses.

"Why does this place have so many bedrooms?" Santana asked. "I thought it was a research institute."

"This is the residential wing. We're pledged to offer safety and lodging to any Shadowhunter who requests it. We can house up to two hundred people here."

"But most of these rooms are empty."

"People come and go. Nobody stays for long. Usually it's just us—Noah, Rachel, Jake, their parents—and me and Hodge."

"Jake?"

"You met the beauteous Rachel? Noah is her elder brother. Jake is the youngest, but he's overseas with his parents."

"On vacation?"

"Not exactly." Quinn hesitated. "You can think of them as—as foreign diplomats, and of this as an embassy, of sorts. Right now they're in the Shadowhunter home country, working out some very delicate peace negotiations. They brought Jake with them because he's so young."

"Shadowhunter home country?" Santana's head was spinning. "What's it called?"

"Idris."

"I've never heard of it."

"You wouldn't have." That irritating superiority was back in Quinn's voice. "Mundanes don't know about it. There are wardings— protective spells—up all over the borders. If you tried to cross into Idris, you'd simply find yourself transported instantly from one border to the next. You'd never know what happened."

"So it's not on any maps?"

"Not mundie ones. For our purposes you can consider it a small country between Germany and France."

"But there isn't anything between Germany and France. Except Switzerland."

"Precisely," said Quinn.

"I take it you've been there. To Idris, I mean."

"I grew up there." Quinn's voice was neutral, but something in her tone let Santana know that more questions in that direction would not be welcome. "Most of us do. There are, of course, Shadowhunters all over the world. We have to be everywhere, because demonic activity is everywhere. But to a Shadowhunter, Idris is always 'home.'"

"Like Mecca or Jerusalem," said Santana, thoughtfully. "So most of you are brought up there, and then when you grow up—"

"We're sent where we're needed," said Quinn shortly. "And there are a few, like Rachel and Noah, who grow up away from the home country because that's where their parents are. With all the resources of the Institute here, with Hodge's training—" She broke off. "This is the library."

They had reached an arch-shaped set of wooden doors. A blue Persian cat with yellow eyes lay curled in front of them. It raised its head as they approached and yowled. "Hey, Jasper," Quinn said, stroking the cat's back with a bare foot. The cat slit its eyes in pleasure.

"Wait," said Santana. "Noah and Rachel and Jake—they're the only Shadowhunters your age that you know, that you spend time with?"

Quinn stopped stroking the cat. "Yes."

"That must get kind of lonely."

"I have everything I need." She pushed the doors open. After a moment's hesitation she followed Quinn inside.

The library was circular, with a ceiling that tapered to a point, as if it had been built inside a tower. The walls were lined with books, the shelves so high that tall ladders set on casters were placed along them at intervals. These were no ordinary books either—these were books bound in leather and velvet, clasped with sturdy-looking locks and hinges made of brass and silver. Their spines were studded with dully glowing jewels and illuminated with gold script. They looked worn in a way that made it clear that these books were not just old but were well-used, and had been loved.

The floor was polished wood, inlaid with chips of glass and marble and bits of semiprecious stone. The inlay formed a pattern that Santana couldn't quite decipher—it might have been the constellations, or even a map of the world; she suspected she'd have to climb up into the tower and look down in order to see it properly.

In the center of the room sat a magnificent desk. It was carved from a single slab of wood, a great, heavy piece of oak that gleamed with the dull shine of years. The slab rested upon the backs of two angels, carved from the same wood, their wings gilded and their faces engraved with a look of suffering, as if the weight of the slab were breaking their backs. Behind the desk sat a thin man with gray-streaked hair and a long beaky noise.

"A book lover, I see," he said, smiling at Santana. "You didn't tell me that, Quinn."

Quinn chuckled. Santana could tell that she had come up behind her and was standing there with her hands in her pockets, grinning that infuriating grin of hers. "We haven't done much talking during our short acquaintance," she said. "I'm afraid our reading habits didn't come up."

Santana turned around and shot her a glare.

"How can you tell?" she asked the man behind the desk. "That I like books, I mean."

"The look on your face when you walked in," he said, standing up and coming around from behind the desk. "Somehow I doubted you were that impressed by me."

Santana stifled a gasp as he rose. For a moment it seemed to her that he was strangely misshapen, his left shoulder humped and higher than the other. As he approached, she saw that the hunch was actually a bird, perched neatly on his shoulder—a glossy feathered creature with bright black eyes.

"This is Hugo," the man said, touching the bird on his shoulder. "Hugo is a raven, and, as such, he knows many things. I, meanwhile, am Hodge Starkweather, a professor of history, and, as such, I do not know nearly enough."

Santana laughed a little, despite herself, and shook his outstretched hand. "Santana Lopez."

"Honored to make your acquaintance," he said. "I would be honored to make the acquaintance of anyone who could kill a Ravener with her bare hands."

"It wasn't my bare hands." It still felt odd to be congratulated for killing something. "It was Quinn's—well, I don't remember what it was called, but—"

"She means my Sensor," Quinn said. "She shoved it down the thing's throat. The runes must have choked it. I guess I'll need another one," she added, almost as an afterthought. "I should have mentioned that."

"There are several extra in the weapons room," said Hodge. When he smiled at Santana, a thousand small lines rayed out from around his eyes, like the cracks in an old painting. "That was quick thinking. What gave you the idea of using the Sensor as a weapon?"

Before she could reply, a sharp laugh sounded through the room. Santana had been so enraptured by the books and distracted by Hodge that she hadn't seen Noah sprawled in an overstuffed red armchair by the empty fireplace. "I can't believe you buy that story, Hodge," he said.

At first Santana didn't even register his words. She was too busy staring at him. Like many only children, she was fascinated by the resemblance between siblings, and now, in the full light of day, she could see exactly how much Noah looked like his sister. They had the same jet-black hair, the same slender eyebrows winging up at the corners, the same smooth, olive-colored skin. But where Rachel was all arrogance, Noah slumped down in the chair as if he hoped nobody would notice him. His lashes were long and dark like Rachel's, but where her eyes were black, his were the dark blue of a bottle glass. They gazed at Santana with hostility as pure and concentrated as acid.

"I'm not quite sure what you mean, Noah." Hodge raised an eyebrow. Santana wondered how old he was; there was a sort of agelessness to him, despite the gray in his hair. He wore a neat gray tweed suit, perfectly pressed. He would have looked like a kindly college professor if it hadn't been for the thick scar that drew up the right side of his face. She wondered how he had gotten it. "Are you suggesting that she didn't kill that demon after all?"

"Of course she didn't. Look at her—she's a mundie, Hodge, and a little kid, at that. There's no way she took on a Ravener."

"I'm not a little kid," Santana interrupted. "I'm seventeen years old—well, I will be on Sunday."

"The same age as Rachel," Hodge said. "Would you call her a child?"

"Rachel hails from one of the greatest Shadowhunter dynasties in history," Noah said dryly. "This girl, on the other hand, hails from New Jersey."

"I'm from Brooklyn!" Santana was outraged. "And so what? I just killed a demon in my own house, and you're going to be a dickhead about it because I'm not some spoiled-rotten rich brat like you and your sister?"

Noah looked astonished. "What did you call me?"

Quinn laughed. "She has a point, Noah," Quinn said. "It's those bridge-and-tunnel demons you really have to watch out for—"

"It's not funny, Quinn," Noah interrupted, starting to his feet. "Are you just going to let her stand there and call me names?"

"Yes," Quinn said kindly. "It'll do you good—try to think of it as endurance training."

"We may be parabatai," Noah said tightly. "But your flippancy is wearing on my patience."

"And your obstinacy is wearing on mine. When I found her, she was lying on the floor in a pool of blood with a dying demon practically on top of her. I watched as it vanished. If she didn't kill it, who did?"

"Raveners are stupid. Maybe it got itself in the neck with its stinger. It's happened before—"

"Now you're suggesting it committed suicide?"

Noah's mouth tightened. "It isn't right for her to be here. Mundies aren't allowed in the Institute, and there are good reasons for that. If anyone knew about this, we could be reported to the Clave."

"That's not entirely true," Hodge said. "The Law does allow us to offer sanctuary to mundanes in certain circumstances. A Ravener has already attacked Santana's mother—she could well have been next."

Attacked. Santana wondered if this was a euphemism for "murdered." The raven on Hodge's shoulder cawed softly.

"Raveners are search-and-destroy machines," Noah said. "They act under orders from warlocks or powerful demon lords. Now, what interest would a warlock or demon lord have in an ordinary mundane household?" His eyes when he looked at Santana were bright with dislike. "Any thoughts?"

Santana said, "It must have been a mistake."

"Demons don't make those kind of mistakes. If they went after your mother, there must have been a reason. If she were innocent—"

"What do you mean, 'innocent'?" Santana's voice was quiet.

Noah looked taken aback. "I—"

"What he means," said Hodge, "is that it is extremely unusual for a powerful demon, the kind who might command a host of lesser demons, to interest himself in the affairs of human beings. No mundane may summon a demon—they lack that power—but there have been some, desperate and foolish, who have found a witch or warlock to do it for them."

"My mother doesn't know any warlocks. She doesn't believe in magic." A thought occurred to Santana. "Madame Dorothea— she lives downstairs—she's a witch. Maybe the demons were after her and got my mom by mistake?"

Hodge's eyebrows shot up into his hair. "A witch lives downstairs from you?"

"She's a hedge-witch—a fake," Quinn said. "I already looked into it. There's no reason for any warlock to be interested in her unless he's in the market for nonfunctional crystal balls."

"And we're back where we began." Hodge reached up to stroke the bird on his shoulder. "It seems the time has come to notify the Clave."

"No!" Quinn said. "We can't—"

"It made sense to keep Santana's presence here a secret while we were not sure she would recover," Hodge said. "But now she has, and she is the first mundane to pass through the doors of the Institute in over a hundred years. You know the rules about mundane knowledge of Shadowhunters, Quinn. The Clave must be informed."

"Absolutely," Noah agreed. "I could get a message to my father—"

"She's not a mundane," Quinn said quietly.

Hodge's eyebrows shot back up to his hairline and stayed there. Noah, caught in the middle of a sentence, choked with surprise. In the sudden silence Santana could hear the sound of Hugo's wings rustling. "But I am," she said.

"No," said Quinn. "You aren't." She turned to Hodge, and Santana saw the slight movement of her throat as she swallowed. She found this glimpse of Quinn's nervousness oddly reassuring. "That night—there were Du'sien demons, dressed like police officers. We had to get past them. Santana was too weak to run, and there wasn't time to hide—she would have died. So I used my stele— put a mendelin rune on the inside of her arm. I thought—"

"Are you out of your mind?" Hodge slammed his hand down on top of the desk so hard that Santana thought the wood might crack. "You know what the Law says about placing marks on mundanes! You—you of all people ought to know better!"

"But it worked," said Quinn. "Santana, show them your arm."

With a baffled glance in Quinn's direction, she held out her bare arm. She remembered looking down at it that night in the alley, thinking how vulnerable it seemed. Now, just below the crease of her wrist, she could see three faint overlapping circles, the lines as faint as the memory of a scar that had faded with the passage of years. "See, it's almost gone," Quinn said. "It didn't hurt her at all."

"That's not the point." Hodge could barely control his anger. "You could have turned her into a Forsaken."

Two bright spots of color burned high up on Noah's cheekbones. "I can't believe you, Quinn. Only Shadowhunters can receive Covenant Marks—they kill mundanes—"

"She's not a mundane. Haven't you been listening? It explains why she could see us. She must have Clave blood."

Santana lowered her arm, feeling suddenly cold. "But I don't. I couldn't."

"You must," Quinn said, without looking at her. "If you didn't, that mark I made on your arm…"

"That's enough, Quinn," said Hodge, the displeasure clear in his voice. "There's no need to frighten her further."

"But I was right, wasn't I? It explains what happened to her mother, too. If she was a Shadowhunter in exile, she might well have Downworld enemies."

"My mother wasn't a Shadowhunter!"

"Your father, then," Quinn said. "What about him?"

Santana returned her gaze with a flat stare. "He died. Before I was born."

Quinn flinched, almost imperceptibly. It was Noah who spoke. "It's possible," he said uncertainly. "If her father were a Shadowhunter, and her mother a mundane—well, we all know it's against the Law to marry a mundie. Maybe they were in hiding."

"My mother would have told me," Santana said, although she thought of the lack of more than one photo of her father, the way her mother never spoke of him, and knew that it wasn't true.

"Not necessarily," said Quinn. "We all have secrets."

"Collin," Santana said. "Our friend. He would know." With the thought of Collin came a flash of guilt and horror. "It's been three days—he must be frantic. Can I call him? Is there a phone?" She turned to Quinn. "Please."

Quinn hesitated, looking at Hodge, who nodded and moved aside from the desk. Behind him was a globe, made of beaten brass, that didn't look quite like other globes she had seen; there was something subtly strange about the shape of the countries and continents. Next to the globe was an old-fashioned black telephone with a silver rotary dial. Santana lifted it to her ear, the familiar dial tone washing over her like soothing water.

Collin picked up on the third ring. "Hello?"

"Collin!" She sagged against the desk. "It's me. It's Santana."

"Santana." She could hear the relief in his voice, along with something else she couldn't quite identify. "You're all right?"

"I'm fine," she said. "I'm sorry I didn't call you before. Collin, my mom—"

"I know. The police were here."

"Then you haven't heard from her." Any vestigial hope that her mother had fled the house and hidden somewhere disappeared. There was no way she wouldn't have contacted Collin. "What did the police say?"

"Just that she was missing." Santana thought of the policewoman with her skeletal hand, and shivered. "Where are you?"

"I'm in the city," Santana said. "I don't know where exactly. With some friends. My wallet's gone, though. If you've got some cash, I could take a cab to your place—"

"No," he said shortly.

The phone slipped in her sweaty hand. She caught it. "What?"

"No," he said. "It's too dangerous. You can't come here."

"We could call—"

"Look." His voice was hard. "Whatever your mother's gotten herself mixed up in, it's nothing to do with me. You're better off where you are."

"But I don't want to stay here." She heard the whine in her voice, like a child's. "I don't know these people. You—"

"I'm not your father, Santana. I've told you that before."

Tears burned the backs of her eyes. "I'm sorry. It's just—"

"Don't call me for favors again," he said. "I've got my own problems, I don't need to be bothered with yours," he added, and hung up the phone.

She stood and stared at the receiver, the dial tone buzzing in her ear like a big ugly wasp. She dialed Collin's number again, and waited. This time it went to voice mail. She banged the phone down, her hands trembling.

Quinn was leaning against the armrest of Noah's chair, watching her. "I take it he wasn't happy to hear from you?"

Santana's heart felt as if it had shrunk down to the size of a walnut: a tiny, hard stone in her chest_. I will not cry_, she thought, _Not in front of these people_.

"I think I'd like to have a talk with Santana," said Hodge. "Alone," he added firmly, seeing Quinn's expression.

Noah stood up. "Fine. We'll leave you to it."

"That's hardly fair," Quinn objected. "I'm the one who found her. I'm the one who saved her life! You want me here, don't you?" she appealed, turning to Santana.

Santana looked away, knowing that if she opened her mouth, she'd start to cry. As if from a distance, she heard Noah laugh.

"Not everyone wants you all the time, Quinn," he said.

"Don't be ridiculous," she heard Quinn say, but she sounded disappointed. "Fine, then. We'll be in the weapons room."

The door closed behind them with a definitive click. Santana's eyes were stinging the way they did when she tried to hold tears back for too long. Hodge loomed up in front of her, a fussing gray blur. "Sit down," he said. "Here, on the couch."

She sank gratefully onto the soft cushions. Her cheeks were wet. She reached up to brush the tears away, blinking. "I don't cry much usually," she found herself saying. "It doesn't mean anything. I'll be all right in a minute."

"Most people don't cry when they're upset or frightened, but rather when they're frustrated. Your frustration is understandable. You've been through a most trying time."

"Trying?" Santana wiped her eyes on the hem of Rachel's shirt. "You could say that."

Hodge pulled the chair out from behind the desk, dragging it over so that he could sit facing her. His eyes, she saw, were gray, like his hair and tweed coat, but there was kindness in them. "Is there anything I could get for you?" he asked. "Something to drink? Some tea?"

"I don't want tea," said Santana, with muffled force. "I want to find my mother. And then I want to find out who took her in the first place, and I want to kill them."

"Unfortunately," said Hodge, "we're all out of bitter revenge at the moment, so it's either tea or nothing."

Santana dropped the hem of the shirt—now spotted all over with wet blotches—and said, "What am I supposed to do, then?"

"You could start by telling me a little about what happened," Hodge said, rummaging in his pocket. He produced a handkerchief—crisply folded—and handed it to her. She took it with silent astonishment. She'd never before known anyone who carried a handkerchief. "The demon you saw in your apartment—was that the first such creature you'd ever seen? You had no inkling such creatures existed before?"

Santana shook her head, then paused. "One before, but I didn't realize what it was. The first time I saw Quinn—"

"Right, of course, how foolish of me to forget." Hodge nodded. "In Pandemonium. That was the first time?"

"Yes."

"And your mother never mentioned them to you—nothing about another world, perhaps, that most people cannot see? Did she seem particularly interested in myths, fairy tales, legends of the fantastic—"

"No. She hated all that stuff. She even hated Disney movies. She didn't like me reading manga. She said it was childish."

Hodge scratched his head. His hair didn't move. "Most peculiar," he murmured.

"Not really," said Santana. "My mother wasn't peculiar. She was the most normal person in the world."

"Normal people don't generally find their homes ransacked by demons," Hodge said, not unkindly.

"Couldn't it have been a mistake?"

"If it had been a mistake," Hodge said, "and you were an ordinary girl, you would not have seen the demon that attacked you—or if you had, your mind would have processed it as something else entirely: a vicious dog, even another human being. That you could see it, that it spoke to you—"

"How did you know it spoke to me?"

"Quinn reported that you said 'It talked.'"

"It hissed." Santana shivered, remembering. "It talked about wanting to eat me, but I think it wasn't supposed to."

"Raveners are generally under the control of a stronger demon. They're not very bright or capable on their own," explained Hodge. "Did it say what its master was looking for?"

Santana thought. "It said something about a Santos, but—"

Hodge jerked upright, so abruptly that Hugo, who had been resting comfortably on his shoulder, launched himself into the air with an irritable caw. "Santos?"

"Yes," Santana said. "I heard the same name in Pandemonium from the boy—I mean, the demon—"

"It's a name we all know," Hodge said shortly. His voice was steady, but she could see a slight tremble in his hands. Hugo, back on his shoulder, ruffled his feathers uneasily.

"A demon?"

"No. Santos is—was—a Shadowhunter."

"A Shadowhunter? Why do you say was?"

"Because he's dead," said Hodge flatly. "He's been dead for fifteen years."

Santana sank back against the couch cushions. Her head was throbbing. Maybe she should have gone for that tea after all. "Could it be someone else? Someone with the same name?"

Hodge's laugh was a humorless bark. "No. But it could have been someone using his name to send a message." He stood up and paced to his desk, hands locked behind his back. "And this would be the time to do it."

"Why now?"

"Because of the Accords."

"The peace negotiations? Quinn mentioned those. Peace with who?"

"Downworlders," Hodge murmured. He looked down at Santana. His mouth was a tight line. "Forgive me," he said. "This must be confusing for you."

"You think?"

He leaned against the desk, stroking Hugo's feathers absently. "Downworlders are those who share the Shadow World with us. We have always lived in an uneasy peace with them."

"Like vampires, werewolves, and…"

"The Fair Folk," Hodge said. "Faeries. And Lilith's children, being half-demon, or warlocks."

"So what are you Shadowhunters?"

"We are sometimes called the Nephilim," said Hodge. "In the Bible they were the offspring of humans and angels. The legend of the origin of Shadowhunters is that they were created more than a thousand years ago, when humans were being overrun by demon invasions from other worlds. A warlock summoned the Angel Raziel, who mixed some of his own blood with the blood of men in a cup, and gave it to those men to drink. Those who drank the Angel's blood became Shadowhunters, as did their children and their children's children. The cup thereafter was known as the Mortal Cup. Though the legend may not be fact, what is true is that through the years, when Shadowhunter ranks were depleted, it was always possible to create more Shadowhunters using the Cup."

"Was always possible?"

"The Cup is gone," said Hodge. "Destroyed by Santos, just before he died. He set a great fire and burned himself to death along with his family, his wife, and his child. Scorched the land black. No one will build there still. They say the land is cursed."

"Is it?"

"Possibly. The Clave hands down curses on occasion as punishment for breaking the Law. Santos broke the greatest Law of all—he took up arms against his fellow Shadowhunters and slew them. He and his group, the Circle, killed dozens of their brethren along with hundreds of Downworlders during the last Accords. They were only barely defeated."

"Why would he want to turn on other Shadowhunters?"

"He didn't approve of the Accords. He despised Downworlders and felt that they should be slaughtered, wholesale, to keep this world pure for human beings. Though the Downworlders are not demons, not invaders, he felt they were demonic in nature, and that that was enough. The Clave did not agree—they felt the assistance of Downworlders was necessary if we were ever to drive off demon-kind for good. And who could argue, really, that the Fair Folk do not belong in this world, when they have been here longer than we have?"

"Did the Accords get signed?"

"Yes, they were signed. When the Downworlders saw the Clave turn on Santos and his Circle in their defense, they realized Shadowhunters were not their enemies. Ironically, with his insurrection Santos made the Accords possible." Hodge sat down in the chair again. "I apologize, this must be a dull history lesson for you. That was Santos. A firebrand, a visionary, a man of great personal charm and conviction. And a killer. Now someone is invoking his name …"

"But who?" Santana asked. "And what does my mother have to do with it?"

Hodge stood up again. "I don't know. But I shall do what I can to find out. I will send messages to the Clave and also to the Silent Brothers. They may wish to speak with you."

Santana didn't ask who the Silent Brothers were. She was tired of asking questions whose answers only made her more confused. She stood up. "Is there any chance I could go home?"

Hodge looked concerned. "No, I—I wouldn't think that would be wise."

"There are things I need there, even if I'm going to stay here. Clothes—"

"We can give you money to purchase new clothes."

"Please," Santana said. "I have to see if—I have to see what's left."

Hodge hesitated, then offered a short, inverted nod. "If Quinn agrees to it, you may both go." He turned to the desk, rummaging among the papers. He glanced over his shoulder as if realizing she was still there. "She's in the weapons room."

"I don't know where that is."

Hodge smiled crookedly. "Jasper will take you."

She glanced toward the door where the fat blue Persian was curled up like a small ottoman. He rose as she came forward, fur rippling like liquid. With an imperious meow he led her into the hall. When she looked back over her shoulder, she saw Hodge already scribbling on a piece of paper. _Sending a message to the mysterious Clave_, she guessed. They didn't sound like very nice people. She wondered what their response would be.

The red ink looked like blood against the white paper. Frowning, Hodge Starkweather rolled the letter, carefully and meticulously, into the shape of a tube, and whistled for Hugo. The bird, cawing softly, settled on his wrist. Hodge winced. Years ago, in the Uprising, he had sustained a wound to that shoulder, and even as light a weight as Hugo's—or the turn of a season, a change in temperature or humidity, too sudden a movement of his arm—awakened old twinges and the memories of pains better forgotten.

There were some memories, though, that never faded. Images burst like flashbulbs behind his lids when he closed his eyes. Blood and bodies, trampled earth, a white podium stained with red. The cries of the dying. The green and rolling fields of Idris and its endless blue sky, pierced by the towers of the Glass City. The pain of loss surged up inside him like a wave; he tightened his fist, and Hugo, wings fluttering, pecked angrily at his fingers, drawing blood. Opening his hand, Hodge released the bird, who circled his head as he flew up to the skylight and then vanished.

Shaking off his sense of foreboding, Hodge reached for another piece of paper, not noticing the scarlet drops that smeared the paper as he wrote.

* * *

**Happy Thanksgiving everyone!**


End file.
